


Let Your Sins be Strong (That Crown Don’t Make You a Prince remix)

by xzombiexkittenx



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Lucifer but not as you know him, M/M, Sam 'Boy King of Hell' Winchester, Sibling Incest, religious hooha
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-07
Updated: 2009-09-07
Packaged: 2017-11-04 10:41:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 27,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/392953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xzombiexkittenx/pseuds/xzombiexkittenx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world’s a mess and Sam just needs to rule it. Dean’s not quite so on board with this plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Греши сильней](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1024838) by [Kana_Go](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kana_Go/pseuds/Kana_Go)
  * Inspired by [A Sword and Shield Victorious](https://archiveofourown.org/works/185447) by [dreamlittleyo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamlittleyo/pseuds/dreamlittleyo). 



**Then** : St. Mary's, Ilchester, Maryland.

Dean, with his hands fisted tight into Sam’s coat, and Sam hanging onto him just the same, pushed his brother back, and put himself between Sam and the gaping wound between Hell and Earth. And even with the world about to end, Sam spared a split second to feel a combination of annoyance, sadness and relief that even come the last seconds of their life, Dean was still his brother, still the same, and still needlessly and helplessly trying to protect him.

There was a light so bright and painful that it stripped away everything else, and felt as though Sam’s eyes would burn out of his head, like his flesh would melt away. And there was a sound like a deep ringing bell that came up through his bones and shook him until he thought he would crumble into breath and clay. Sam could feel Dean’s back against his chest, solid and trembling, and wondered if this was how they would die. He had tried to stop it, he had turned himself into something terrible, and now he and Dean were going to die, and he hurt all over, with a pain that was worse than dying, like every inch of was him falling apart.

Then there was silence so abrupt that the ringing in Sam’s ears seemed painfully loud and the light was gone. Sam and Dean were collapsing against each other, one of Sam’s hands cradling Dean’s head, the other still clenched tight to his shirt, Dean’s hands pushing Sam’s face down against his shoulder like if he couldn’t hide Sam from whatever was going to happen he would hide whatever was going to happen from Sam. Sam tucked his brother’s head against his own shoulder and abruptly realized they were huddled on their knees on the floor. He turned his face so he could see, blinked the sunspots and tears out of his eyes and looked up as the aching in him slowly turned from beyond pain into something he could breathe through.

The man standing in front of them, flexing his fingers and toes in a thoughtful sort of way had curly red-blonde hair down to his biceps and he was the most beautiful thing Sam had ever seen. He rolled his shoulders, muscles that Sam was pretty sure most people didn’t have moving under skin that was very nearly the colour of bronze, and his back let out a series of seriously brutal sounding cracks. Then Sam was on his feet, hauling Dean backwards, hard grip on Dean’s wrist, until they both hit the skin-warm stone of the chapel wall. 

“Please allow me to introduce myself,” the man said. His voice was gravelly, as though he hadn’t used it for a very long time, but Sam got the impression that it used to be like silk. “I’m a man of wealth and taste.”

Sam’s head was still ringing so it took him a second to realize that the man had winked at his brother, long sooty lashes brushing against the soft, slightly bruised-looking skin under his eyes. 

Dean was gaping at the man like an idiot. “You what?” he said, then, “Holy shit. You’re Lucifer.” 

Lucifer’s smirk pulled up into something like a smile, and Sam wanted to go back down on his knees. “Pleased to meet you, brothers Winchester,” the angel said. “Guess you guessed my name.” Lucifer, naked, smooth and sexless, put its hand on Sam’s face; it had long, thin fingers, the tips of claw-like nails just touching the fragile skin of Sam’s temple, thumb curved under his jaw. It leaned in, and he could smell Lucifer’s breath: old blood, rotten meat, and something sickly sweet, that reminded him of throwing up too many margaritas. 

Sam gagged slightly, breathing hard and fast through his mouth. His grip around Dean’s wrist was sweaty and painful. “Don’t hurt him,” Sam said, and pushed Dean as best he could behind him. Dean had given up everything, and now it was his turn to act. He couldn’t save Dean from the Pit, but he could do this last thing before the world ended. “I set you free, so you owe me one. You do me this favor. Promise never to hurt him, or come after him.”

“Shut up, Sam,” Dean hissed.

“Promise me!” Sam demanded, feeling reckless and dangerous, adrenaline and fear pushing him into the fight response instead of the more sensible flight option.

“We are not a demon you can make deals with,” Lucifer said, patiently, putting its other hand on the other side of Sam’s face and tipping Sam’s head down to get a good look at him. Sam noticed, feeling a little hysterical, that he was actually taller than the devil. “You’re very beautiful. Not that that’s important, in the long run, but we find you pleasing to look at.” Then Lucifer backed away to a more respectable distance and began eyeing the chapel with a little moue of distaste. It prodded Lilith’s dental hygienist’s corpse with a toe. “We tire of this place,” it said. “Until later.” 

With a sound like the settling of wings, Lucifer was gone.

“Holy shit,” Dean said again. “Holy fucking shit.”

“It quoted the Rolling Stones, right?” Sam said, sounding just as stunned as Dean had. “I mean, that was the Stones?”

“We need to get out of here,” Dean said.

When they got outside there was no fire raining from the sky, no swarms of insects, no demons rushing about in great clouds of black smoke. No nothing, except a light, misting rain which was more annoying than it was evil. Dean turned up his collar with one hand, since Sam was still holding on to his other wrist. He couldn’t bring himself to let go, even when Dean glanced down and said, “Sammy.”

Sam climbed in through the drivers’ side, pulling Dean along with him, and didn’t let go until Dean was behind the wheel, all doors shut and locked. Then he just transferred his grip to the back of Dean’s neck, feeling like if they weren’t skin to skin for more than a second, Dean would vanish. They sat there for a minute, idling, Dean’s foot on the clutch, hands white-knuckled around the wheel.

They couldn’t talk about what Sam had done, and there was no plan, no going back, and not a snowball’s chance in Hell they were getting out of this one. Sam felt the urge to apologize again, but it felt like a stupid thing to do this late in the game. The adrenaline was already wearing off, leaving him shaky and tired. He tried to get a proper handle on what he’d done but it was too big. It wasn’t like killing demons, knowing there was a person in the meatsuit. It was bigger even than drinking a girl’s blood to get at the demon inside her while she cried and begged for him to stop. It just didn’t feel like it could be. He couldn’t have done this. He wasn’t that man.

Dean put the car into drive and pulled the car back onto the road. “Dude,” Dean said, because there was no situation too fucked up for Dean to try and bullshit his way through. “Lucifer thinks you’re hot.”

They went back to Bobby’s because there wasn’t really anywhere else for them to go.

It was mid afternoon when they arrived, the Impala kicking up dust into the haze of the day, muting everything into a dull brown-grey. Sam got out of the car and couldn’t smell any of it, not the dust, not the rust of the junkers piled around him, nothing but the phantom stench of dead things and bile. And Dean’s sweat and the last traces of some hotel shampoo because he’d spent the whole drive pressed up against him so close that Dean had fumbled trying to shift gears. Bobby met them on the porch, shotgun in hand but not pointed at them, hat pulled down over the nasty goose-egg Sam had given him.

“I, uh,” Sam said and then stopped because there wasn’t really anything to say. Dean’s wrist twisted in his grip, not trying to get away, just a change, a slide, until he was holding Sam’s hand, like Sam was that same kid he’d been when Dean could still piggy-back him. Sam looked at Dean and realized Dean had angled his body slightly between the shotgun and Sam. 

“I guess you might as well come in,” Bobby said wearily. He was looking past them, watching the road, but there was nothing to see and nothing to hear except the ticking of the Impala’s engine as it cooled down.

They settled around Bobby’s kitchen table, which had been shored up with a slim volume of some sort for as long as Sam could remember, one leg slowly sinking into the pages until the surface sloped again. Bobby found three big ceramic coffee cups, the only clean dishes in his usually moderately tidy kitchen. One of them was chipped, one of them missing its handle. Bobby poured them all full of whiskey and took a determined sip. Sam put his free hand over his face and started to cry, shaking like he had back in that chapel, like he was falling apart.

It was too much, too much to even think about. He’d done this, he’d started the end of the world and how the fuck was he supposed to get his head around that? How was he supposed to make it better? He’d screwed up so hard, thrown in his lot with demons and evil and he’d killed Cindy, he’d bled her dry just so he could let Lucifer out of the Pit and how was he supposed to understand that, never mind live with it?

“It’s okay, Sammy,” Dean said and it sounded automatic as he squeezed Sam’s fingers and drank until he had to stop or risk gagging the whiskey back up onto the table. 

“Jesus Christ,” Bobby said as Sam put his head onto Dean’s shoulder. Sam wept. 

*~*~*

Lucifer came for Sam one week and two days later. Sam was standing purposelessly out in the scrap yard, because it wasn’t as though Bobby was treating him badly, or that Dean was giving him shit, it was more like the two of them were on eggshells and no one was talking about what Sam had done and he had to get away from them, just for a minute, so he could breathe.

He thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye and when he turned around he saw Lucifer perched on the side panel of the flatbed of a truck behind him. It shouldn’t have been possible to balance on so narrow a surface but Lucifer was managing it. The angel was clothed now, black trench-coat, grey suit, white shirt unbuttoned at the neck and untucked. It was still barefoot, still beautiful. Sam stuck his hands in his pockets and thought about Dean, sitting at the kitchen table, cleaning guns that didn’t need cleaning, who pretended Sam hadn’t fucked up worse than anyone in the history of the world and who offered his forgiveness without being asked. Dean who would get between Lucifer and his brother if he was here, knowing he wouldn’t even slow the angel down.

God, Sam had tried for so long. He thought about the hallucination of himself, just a kid, accusing him of giving up on the dream. Sam was tired of dreaming. He’d dreamed of being normal. And he’d got it. Then he’d dreamed of fire, of the other kids, of death, and that had happened too. Now he dreamed of angels screaming overhead, sharp teeth and flaming swords, tearing into each other, of Dean at his right hand, of power lashing through him that could turn cities to salt, summon plague and pestilence, could burn through humans and demons. In his dreams he could see his reflection in Dean’s black eyes, and he didn’t recognize his own face, scarred, bloodied, and yellow-eyed. And he knew better than to pray that maybe this time he’d be wrong.

Lucifer hopped off the car, landing almost without sound, and leaned back, one hip cocked. “Hello, Sam,” it said.

“So, I’m guessing you want something,” Sam said, trying for something a little tougher than begging the angel not to hurt his brother again.

Lucifer narrowed its eyes at him and abruptly Sam was forced down to his knees, hitting the ground hard, pain shocking the breath out of him. “Your respect, Samuel, would be a good place to start. We are the ruler of this world, we are the first, and the most beloved, and we do not expect _backchat_.” Lucifer stroked a hand through his hair, nails scraping gently over his scalp. “Samuel,” it said. “Trust us when we say we understand your reluctance to submit. But we have much to talk about, and we expect some level of deference. We are not your father; we are your King, and your only hope at surviving this war, so quit fucking around.”

Sam thought about Dean again and knew his brother would have something to say about the whole fucking mess, but Dean wasn’t there, and Sam had seconds to make a decision. So when Lucifer said the words, “Survive this war,” Sam only had one answer. “I’m listening, Your Majesty,” he said. 

“In the beginning there was Him and there was the Host. Then there was this world, and Lilith and Adam and then Eve, which I’m sure you’re familiar with. The Fall, I’m sure you also know in some vague detail and the closing of the Gates to all but one.”

Sam could see, suddenly, the war that had raged. Thick black ichor and the unearthly screams of the angels that had died. The skies on fire and the hurricane of wings beating, the terrible rage on Lucifer’s face as it realized it was losing, that his third of the Host couldn’t hold back the Seraphim, the archangels, the principalities... Sam knew what they looked like when they weren’t in meatsuits – many winged things, bronze feet and too many faces, too much splendor. He could hear the sound of the pearly gates closing, the grating of hinges like continents moving. Sam clutched at his head and the vision faded before he went mad from it. 

“Yourself,” Sam croaked and wiped at his nose with the back of his wrist, getting blood on his shirtsleeve. “They let you back in. The book of Job. Your Majesty goes back to Heaven and speaks to Him.”

Lucifer stood and Sam stayed where he was on the ground, gazing up at it. It wasn’t in a meatsuit, powerful enough to control its appearance without one, but he wasn’t looking at its true face, not really. Just thinking about that made him weep. “We were put into our cage when He stopped paying attention. A second battle, a second loss gone unremarked upon and unrecorded. Prior to that we were content to roam our world, playing our games, watching your lives, and by that point Hell pretty much ran itself. With others watching the Pit, there was little need to seek us out. They were bound away from us and only Azazel and the one you called Ruby took it upon themselves to find us.”

“The angels want to fight,” Sam said. “They want to kill Your Majesty.”

“They have no right,” Lucifer spat, pacing back and forth like a caged animal, tight little circles. It was growling under its breath. “They assume too much. Without the Word, making up their own commands, they are rightfully ours. They Fall and don’t know it and now the gates are shut to us, and they would destroy His work without permission. This world is _mine_ ,” Lucifer said, low and angry. “And He gave it to me.” 

Sam looked out at the salvage yard and saw nothing. “Azazel picked me,” he said. “But he picked dozens, hundreds of other children, generations apart. What is it about me? What is it that Your Majesty wants from me?”

Lucifer smiled at him, almost fondly. “Samuel,” it said. “We are all part of His ineffable Plan. Those children will serve their role, but you are not like them. You are our second in command, our liaison between worlds, human and not, blood and bone and flesh and power. But you misunderstand us, we don’t want to end the world, we want to rule it as we have done for thousands of years. And you, Samuel Winchester, will help us do so. Our armies of demons, the Fallen Host, you, and I, we will fight this war and we will win it. You are a prince amongst men, you are my prince.” God, it was beautiful when it smiled and it was smiling at Sam. 

Sam sucked in a deep breath. “Alright,” he said, standing up. He put his hands on the face of the angel that God had created first, that He had loved, still loved, the most. Its skin was soft and dry, and Sam leaned over and pressed a kiss to Lucifer’s full, bowed lips. “I swear, by His Word and all the powers of Hell to serve you,” Sam said against Lucifer’s mouth. 

“Your Majesty,” someone who wasn’t Sam said.

Sam whipped his head around and found himself looking at a demon, kneeling in front of its god, riding some poor fuck; ugly jean shorts and an even uglier t-shirt. Lucifer barely glanced at the demon. “Go ahead,” it said. “We may have been caged but we weren’t ignorant. Go on. Show us what you can do.”

Sam held out a hand, feeling for the demon blood in him that wasn’t there anymore. There was nothing, nothing to latch onto, no latent powers, no nothing. Maybe relaxing would help, but Sam couldn’t, just plain couldn’t do it, and when Lucifer took a closer look at him, it got a thunderous look on its face and Sam flinched back, suddenly terrified. He realized he couldn’t remember the last time he’d told Dean he loved him. He hadn’t said it once. Not even after everything. And now something, probably something terrible, was going to happen and Dean would never have heard it. Sam blinked and felt tears spill down his face. He said, “Please,” one hand reaching out to grab onto the lapel of Lucifer’s trenchcoat, but then he couldn’t speak, there was a rush of air and they were gone.

*~*~*

There’s a cathedral in Italy where the veil between Earth and Hell is thin. How the Italians managed to misplace this crumbling behemoth, Sam had no idea, but it was long abandoned, weeds growing up around the nameless stones outside, the huge wooden doors rotted off the hinges. 

Inside it was cool and damp and the baleful stares of the saints were cataracted with dust. Stone angels stood on plinths next to the Virgin Mary who cradled her son’s body in her arms. It wasn’t a replica of the pieta, Sam could see that much from the realism of Christ’s wounds and the devastation on Mary’s face. 

Lucifer stalked past it and the Mary began to weep blood, the wounds on Christ’s body dark with it, a slow trickle from the wound in his side. If there ever was a crucifix, it was long gone, the marble altar bare. Sam stood next to Lucifer on the dais as the church filled with demons, until there must have been thousands of them, packed in the pews and aisles, surrounding the building outside, watching Sam because they were too afraid to look at their god who was suddenly real and walking amongst them. Sam was pretty sure that the front rows weren’t demons but fallen angels in meatsuits. He hadn’t thought it could get much worse than freeing Lucifer from Hell. This was worse.

“What-” Sam said and Lucifer grabbed him by the throat and shoved him, dragged him down, until Sam was flat on his back on the altar, Lucifer crouched over him, feet on either side of Sam’s hips.

It tore Sam’s shirts into rags and swept them aside. It wasn’t happy about the tattoo and it’s really wasn’t happy about the burn mark where Meg locked herself inside of him and Bobby’s hot poker forced her out. But whatever it saw when it looked inside of Sam – and he could feel it, like a low hum in his bones – made it furious. “Mary,” it snarled like an insult. 

Sam looked helplessly at the statue as its blood dripped down its chin onto Jesus’ body and then he realized Lucifer means his own mother. Mary the hunter, who knew demons were coming. “What did she do to me?” Sam asked. Maybe she’d found something to help protect her youngest son, even if she couldn’t protect herself. His stomach cramped up wondering what she could do to make Lucifer stare through him like he wanted to replace Sam’s bones, tear apart his DNA and remake it. “Oh God,” Sam said. “What are you going to do to me?”

Demons swarmed up onto the dais, catching hold of Sam. “Psalm twenty-two, prophecies for the coming of heirs,” Lucifer said and when Sam tried to get up it planted a foot in the center of his chest, resting its arms on its bent knee, watching his face as the demons stripped Sam down. The cathedral echoed with the sounds of Sam’s furious struggles, his pleading and swearing and then with his screams as they took iron spikes and drove them through his wrists and ankles, staking him down to the altar, driving the metal into the stone with heavy mallets.

“For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet,” Lucifer said calmly. Sam could no longer see, he was in too much agony as his blood poured off the altar to pool at the feet of demons, but he could hear hellhounds, licking his blood off the floor, snarling and snapping at each other. “I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me. They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. But be not thou far from me, O Lord: O my strength, haste thee to help me. Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog. Save me from the lion's mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.”

Lucifer climbed down off the altar. 

“Please,” Sam begged. “Oh my God, please don’t.”

Lucifer kissed him on the forehead and Sam could feel it there, spit like the mark of Cain. “This is going to hurt,” it said as the demons brought it Hellfire because Hell might be inconceivable, beyond explanation, beyond comprehension, but there is fire sure enough. 

Lucifer watched Sam try to pull the stakes through his own wrists and ankles to get away and it was smiling at him. Sam could feel the heat of the fire from the other end of the cathedral; having it even close to him was unbearable. He cried out for his brother, too terrified to think, voice cracked with agony and Lucifer laughed at him. “You two are fucking ridiculous,” it said fondly and then it began.

If Sam had any last words other than his brother’s name, they were incomprehensible under the screams. No curses, or forgivnesses, no, “Why have you forsaken me.” His legacy was his brother’s name.

Somewhere across the ocean, flanked by his archangel, holed up and hiding from Heaven and Hell, in a dirty by-the-hour motel, sobbing into the sleeve of his dressing gown, blind with vision and cheap vodka bought from the nearby gas station, Chuck picked up a broken-ended ball-point pen and scrawled out the death of Sam Winchester before staggering to the bathroom and passing out.

*~*~*

Sam woke up three days later, gasping and clawing at his chest, with the uncomfortable sensation that he’d been dead. Again.

He had the impression that he was in some kind of fancy hotel. Heaven left his brother sleeping in cheap motels, hustling bars for cash and scamming credit card companies to get by. They let Dean live off of diner food and drink himself to sleep. They let him get torn up on hunts they didn’t care about and that pristine body they brought him back in was already getting dinged up. Apparently Hell takes better care of its own.

Sam sat up and his head didn’t spin, so he put his feet on the carpet, which was soft under his bare feet and didn’t smell of industrial cleaner or jizz. There was a dressing gown at the end of the bed, and Sam snagged it and headed to the bathroom. The room was bigger than some of the places he’d lived in.

“Man up, Winchester,” he told himself and looked in the mirror.

The good news was that his eyes weren’t yellow but that was about where the good news began and ended. Black scars like burn marks twisted up one arm, covering the mark Meg put on him and the right side of his chest looked about the same, obliterating his tattoo. Sam looked down at his wrists where the holes had healed but scars remained.

He’d struggled, of course he’d struggled, and because the demon holding his head fucked up Sam had done the wrong thing at the wrong time and so the black scars on his chest ran all the way up the side of his neck and the side of his face. And then there was the inside of his lips, the inside of his mouth, his tongue, his teeth. All of it was ink black. They’d tipped the Hellfire into his mouth, he was pretty sure he remembered that, the way it had burned him from the inside out, and the way he hadn’t even been able to scream at that point.

Sam slammed his fist into the wall and the plaster and stone crumbled under his hand like cardboard. His hand didn’t even hurt and he put another hole in the wall, and then another and another, just to see if he could, until he was standing looking out at lush gardens with only the remnants of a wall in front of him. “Congratulations, Sam,” he said to himself. “You’re not just any old freak, you’re the crown prince of the freaks.”

It felt strange though. He felt settled in his own skin, resting solid in his bones. It was like spending his whole life in a bubble and now he’d been let loose. And maybe he was the crown prince of the freaks, but these freaks could do great and terrible things. Dean would tell him that this wasn’t the win they were looking for, but Dean wasn’t there and Sam couldn’t quite dredge up the old song and dance he used to give himself about the shades of grey of his demonic powers. His powers were beyond demonic, he was the heir to angels. If the Heavenly Host weren’t going to play fair with humanity, why on earth should he hold back if the end game was saving the world?

“Good to see you up and about, Samuel. It’s Tuesday, in case you were wondering,” Lucifer said from behind him and Sam stopped trying to batter the hotel they were in into dust.

“The Hellfire?” Sam asked, gesturing at his mouth. “You, what? poured it down my throat?” 

Just because he was on board with stepping up to the plate, didn’t mean he had to like the makeover that came with it. It was going to make it much harder to convince Dean that following Sam down his path was the best course of action. No matter what else went down, Sam was determined to keep Dean on his side. He was Sam’s brother after all; he’d proven himself to be the most loyal, the most giving, and the most important being in Sam’s life. Dean died for Sam so Sam could die to save the world. 

It certainly sounded good to Sam. Dean was his, by his own choice. Convincing his brother of that was probably going to be a total pain in the ass though.

Lucifer shrugged. “Something like that. You will find clothing in the wardrobe. Get dressed and meet us in the living room.”

Since Sam couldn’t tell if the ‘us’ meant Lucifer, or Lucifer and others, he took the time to make sure his shirt was buttoned correctly and brushed his hair. The suit he’d found waiting for him was well-cut and uncomfortable so Sam forwent the jacket and rolled up the sleeves of the shirt. He wasn’t wearing cufflinks to talk to demons. Lucifer didn’t even tuck its fucking shirt in, so Sam wasn’t putting on any damn cufflinks. There weren’t any shoes, so Sam padded barefoot into the adjoining and no less magnificent room where Lucifer sat. It wasn’t alone. There were seven bodies and six others in the room and whatever Lucifer had done to Sam, at least something was different because he knew exactly what they were.

“Samuel,” Lucifer said. “The Lord of Flies, Berith, Astaroth, Carreau, Belial.” Sam wasn’t sure what the protocol for meeting fallen angels was so he just sat in the empty chair. “Lord of Dark Places, Prince of the Cherubim, Prince of Thrones, Prince of Powers, and Prince in the Order of Virtues.” 

Whatever else they were, they were also riding around in some extremely good-looking meatsuits. Instead of the usual assortment of whoever the heck was walking by at the moment, Beezelbub was an androgynous, glammed up Japanese man, Berith seemed to be riding a shirtless greeter for Abercrombie and Fitch, Astaroth looked like a Brazilian model with legs up to her armpits, Carreau was in someone who bore a really strong resemblance to Taye Diggs, but hopefully wasn’t actually him, and Belial seemed to be riding identical twins at the same time, both petite Hispanic brunettes that made Sam think of Ruby.

“Hi,” Sam said, trying not to look like he was wiping his palms off on his pants, even though that’s what he was doing. “Sam’s fine.”

The seventh meatsuit in the room had a terrified demon in it. Sam couldn’t see its face because it was crouched on the floor in supplication.

“I think the scars makes him look more handsome,” Belial said and both girls it was riding spoke at once so it sounded oddly in stereo. “For a human.” Berith made an annoyed sound, but held its peace.

“Kill him,” Lucifer said to Sam, indicating the demon. “He failed to restrain you adequately.” Sam realized he was looking at the demon who was responsible for what had happened to his face. He also realized that the angels could give less of a shit about the demon. This was a test for him. If he couldn’t exorcise a low-ranking demon then he wasn’t the One and he doubted they’d return him to his brother and wish him well.

Sam looked at the demon, who was begging for his life. The demon pressed wet, snotty kisses to his bare feet, which was disgusting and uncomfortable and Sam wished he would stop. If the demons wanted to show fear and awe there were less messy ways, Sam was sure of that, and he wished the demon would try some of those. 

Sam put a tentative hand on the demon’s head. He didn’t have to reach, he didn’t have to try. No headache, no struggle. The demon flared inside the human it was in, a bright flash of light and then a burned out body was lying at Sam’s feet and the demon was gone. He’d overdone it, Sam could tell that much immediately, considering the skin of its host was smoldering.

“No control at all,” Berith said. “A little finesse wouldn’t go amiss.”

Sam was a too busy feeling shocked to be insulted. “No headache?” Lucifer asked smugly and Sam gaped at it. “You won Azazel’s game while you were, metaphorically, hogtied, gagged, and blindfolded, with wax in your ears. Mary worked some powerful bindings on you. She must have had celestial help.” It turned to the other angels. “Do you agree, first of your spheres? Is Samuel acceptable to you?’

There was some grumbling, but most of it seemed half-hearted and Sam could smell politics in the way the others didn’t just submit. “Not to be rude,” Sam said faintly, “but I need to go freak out for a second, I’ll be right back.” He got up and fled into the bedroom. The sheets had already been changed, the bathroom tidied.

He felt wired with nervous energy, anxious and alive, and he wanted to laugh, or maybe shout, fight someone, fuck someone. Sam suddenly understood what Dean had been talking about when he would try to explain post-hunt highs, which Sam had never felt. It figured that becoming the anti-Christ was what it took to make him understand his brother better.

Sam picked up the phone and dialed Dean’s mobile. His brother answered on the second ring and Sam realized he didn’t know what to say.

 _Where the fuck are you?_ Dean said, sounding far away and terrified.

Sam pressed his forehead to the wall and closed his eyes so he could pretend Dean was in the room with him. “Don’t look for me,” he said. “You don’t want to watch this, and you can’t stop them so just…stay where you are and I’ll be able to protect you. Ward the house against angels. If they, if anyone tries to use you to get to me I can’t promise this world will survive what I’ll do. You need to be okay for me. So just, barricade yourself in Bobby’s safe room. You’ll need to add some wards. Make sure you add the wards, Dean.”

_Watch what? Sam…Sam? Sammy, what’s happening? Look, man, just tell me where you are and who you’re with –_

Sam took a deep breath. “I love you, Dean. Okay? Stay with Bobby.” He hung up on his brother and then walked back into the main room to deal with the leaders of Hell.

*~*~*

“Where do demons go when they die?” Sam asked over what had to be the most formal dinner he had ever attended and the most bizarre.

He sat at Lucifer’s right hand, Beezelbub at its left, the other fallen in descending rank down the table. That he apparently ranked higher than the Lord of the fucking Flies, was one of those things that Sam was reevaluating. Before Lucifer had unlocked the power in him, he probably would have said it was a very bad thing but now he just felt sort of smug about it. 

He picked at his dinner, which was, bizarrely, crappy diner food on bone china. Berith still hadn’t put a shirt on the shirtless greeter he was riding and Lucifer was licking ketchup off its fingers with great gusto. Demons, angels and Dean, apparently all have a serious soft spot for roadside fries. He’d asked, and Astaroth had looked up from wolfing down her third bacon cheeseburger and said that the First Seal that had let out Lucifer had given them this interest. As they were stripping his humanity from him, Dean’s love of greasy roadside food had apparently gone first. Anyway, the downstairs team has a thing for fads. 

Sam wanted Dean with him so badly. He thought Dean might even like some of the angels. If he had to be stuck with them, he wanted Dean to like them. “Where do angels go?” Sam added, because if Lucifer decided it was feeling chatty, he might as well ask.

“That none of us know,” Lucifer said with a shrug and resumed eating its Freedom Fries. “Some things remain mysteries to everyone but Him.” Sam thought Lucifer muttered something like, “Close-mouthed bastard.”

Sam picked at his incredibly foul chili. The meat tasted sour and he wasn’t sure if he could get food poisoning anymore, but that chili could probably do it, even if nothing else could. Ever since Lucifer poured Hellfire down his throat everything just sort of tasted wrong. It was possible that the meat was fine, that all the food had been fine, and it was something wrong with Sam, but it was also possible that he needed to go somewhere where demons weren’t the ones preparing the food and then everything would be fine.

“They used to go to Heaven; demons, I mean,” Astaroth chipped in and Sam choked on his own inhalation. “A soul is a soul, even with what we can do to them. But those pompous blowhards upstairs think they know better and won’t let the souls in.” The burger a demon brought her to replace the one she finished was so bloody it was dripping. Sam didn’t think it had even been cooked at all, that it was just bacon and cheese on raw meat. “It’s starting to look like a second Hell up there, which I find fucking hilarious.” 

Belial’s twins looked up from where they were devouring an entire pie. “Not the ones your power killed, those are gone,” they said. “More, absorbed into you, part of your power now.”

Sam absolutely did not want to think about any part of Alistair being inside of him. “I kind of wish you hadn’t told me that part,” he said, rubbing at his chest.

Lucifer laughed at him. “You asked for a reason,” it prompted.

“Can, uh…” Sam scooped up some chili and let it slop back into the bowl. “Can we get Ruby back?”

“The demon?” Beelzebub sneered. “That would be an act of war and Heaven has yet to strike. We are outnumbered, prince, we must operate less foolishly than that if we want to win. Strategy and cunning are required.”

Sam prodded at his chili again. “Okay,” he said, and wished Beelzebub wasn’t such a dick.

He spent four days with the angels, catching up on a whole lot of angelic history that didn’t make it into the books he’d read, and arguing with them about battle plans. They’d fought wars before, Sam wouldn’t argue on flanking maneuvers, but his expertise was people. And Sam was beginning to outline a plan so that the grossly outnumbered army of Hell wouldn’t just get its ass kicked three seconds out of the starting gate. 

He also spent a lot of time flexing his new mojo and testing its limits. When he wasn’t doing that, he was lying in bed feeling depressed and missing Dean so much it made him feel sick to his stomach. He had discovered that he needed much less sleep, so he didn’t even have that to distract him, and so Sam just lay there, staring at the fixed-up wall and reminding himself over and over that he couldn’t have his brother right now, no matter how badly he wanted him there. He realized he was sulking like a toddler because he couldn’t have what he wanted right away, but it didn’t make him feel any cheerier.

After four days in some fancy hotel in what Sam thought might still be Italy he was dragged from his bed in the middle of the night by an extremely apologetic demon, wearing a butler, who practically put the dressing-gown on Sam for him in his haste to get Sam in the room with the angels. 

The news was not good. A duke of some sphere or another had been killed and apparently he’d been quite popular. A very small part of Sam couldn’t help but be glad that something evil had died, but it sounded a lot like Dean’s voice in his head, and Sam had spent an afternoon explaining YouTube and Twitter to Berith and he kind of liked Team Hell. They were a lot more relaxed than their upstairs brothers, for one. And more than that, they didn’t want to end the world. Well, Beezelbub wanted to annex the world, which would be pretty much the same thing, but he was outvoted and by outvoted what happened was that Sam said no and Lucifer agreed. Hell was not a democracy.

Anyway, to say that Team Hell took the news of the duke’s death badly would be a gross understatement. A corpse lay on the dining room table, a sword wound in the body’s chest, the edges blackened by fire. Sam wrapped the housecoat a little closer around himself and retied the sash. He never met the duke, and he never met the meatsuit. Sam wanted to sleep, but didn’t need to and he wanted his brother and it struck him that he honestly didn’t care about the duke or the man it had been riding and they were just two more deaths on a long list.

“Michael,” Lucifer spat like a curse. Sam had never seen it so angry and it felt like the sun had gone out. It turned to Sam, gold eyes glowing like a cat’s, even in the dim light. “I will bring you Ruby,” it said. “And we will go to war.”

The angels left in a flash of blinding light and Sam stood in the room with the desperately confused meatsuits the angels had been wearing and realized that he’d been stuck in the same rooms for four days, dragged there against his will, and now when something was finally happening, he was told to stay behind, and wait. It was maddening, like being fourteen and back under John’s yoke again. They told him this was what he was and then they made him sit on his hands like a goddamn child. Never mind that Sam probably couldn’t have gone with them. He knew that. He just didn’t care. Instead of feeling sorry for the duke, or worried about the angels who had gone to strike against Heaven, Sam started getting angry again.

His brother was out there, probably worried out of his mind, maybe alone. And a war Dean didn’t know about was brewing. Even Castiel had let him down, just disappearing or dying like that. Sam started pacing then, treading the same path that Lucifer had taken. He wasn’t going to just wait around for orders. There had to be things that he could do on his own, to make sure that when Heaven brought their fury down on Earth, the things he cared about would survive.

He had to step over the Taye Diggs looking meatsuit to pace properly and finally just waved a hand, sending the body tumbling out of his way. The man was definitely dead and he was in Sam’s way. One of Belial’s twins was bleeding all over the floor and the other was holding her sister and sobbing. 

Abercrombie and Fitch staggered to his feet and backed away from Sam. “Oh my God,” he said. He sounded southern. “Oh my God, where am I?”

Sam rubbed at the scars on the side of his face. “You’re not hurt, so shut up,” he said, “I can’t think.”

“Please,” the guy said again. “Please, I just want to go home.”

“I said be quiet,” Sam said absently, an idea starting to form, and the guy’s voice shut off like someone had put him on mute. He started to scream, but there was no sound, so Sam didn’t particularly care.

They needed a home base. That was it. If Hell was going to have to defend Earth as well as itself, they would need some major outpost on the mortal plain. A point to rally or retreat to, a stronghold, a safe house, and a symbol to the world that changes were coming.

Sam closed his eyes and when he opened them again he was standing on the Kansas plains, crops flattened all around him, an electric storm overhead. He staggered, landing – or however it worked, Sam wasn’t entirely sure – awkwardly. “A little finesse,” Sam told himself. He was sweating through the robe already so he shrugged it off. On the horizon pre-dawn was lightening the sky and there was no one and nothing for miles. Sam stood for a moment, looking down at his own hands, then he went down on one knee and put his hands on the black, turned earth. He felt out for the fissures between the worlds and all around him the living things began to crawl up out of the dirt and the sky burned and cracked with lightning.

The power building in Sam poured out of him like a hurricane, ripping the ground open, ripping open the barrier between Hell and Earth, and Sam sagged down against the writhing mass of earthworms and insects, shoving his hands down and down into the soil, on both knees now, hunched over himself. Out from the plains, out from between and below a great black city rose, spires stretching up towards the roiling skies.

When the demons came, pouring out of the city in clouds of soul, coming from miles away, stuffing themselves into their new hosts, flocking to the city, to the palace, they found Sam sprawled on the ground. “How’s that for finesse?” Sam muttered through chapped lips, and let the demons set him on his feet, and then, when he couldn’t walk, they carried him into the city of Pandemonium. 

In the palace, where if you followed the twisting hallways and staircases down and down you could walk right into Hell, in the heart of the city, demons washed the dirt from Sam’s body and anointed him with oil and placed upon his head a crown of bone and gold.

*~*~*

“Nice palace, assmunch,” someone said.

Sam lifted his head from where it was stuffed between two pillows. Maybe he didn’t have to sleep as much as he used to, but creating a city had been tiring. He yawned and rolled over, trying to fingercomb his hair into submission. He could make the skies boil around him just by jumping location, but he couldn’t make the damn cowlicks stay down. 

Sam realized two things at once. One, that none of the demons would call him assmunch, and two, the voice didn’t belong to Astorath, who might have. He sat up, one hand outflung. The intruder slammed up against the nearest wall and Sam’s tired brain caught up with his body. For one desperate second he thought it was Dean he’d pinned up against the wall like a butterfly, that somehow his brother had made it into the city without him knowing and had come to find him. 

It wasn’t Dean.

Sam got out of bed, hitching up his sweatpants, and stalked over to better examine the demon. He didn’t recognize the meatsuit; a petite black girl who barely came up to his armpit. She had incredibly battle-useless loose hair extensions down to her ass and Sam wondered briefly how dick a move it would be to ask the demons to stop possessing hot chicks and maybe target an army base or something. It was about then that he realized he knew the demon inside. 

“Ruby!” Sam said, lifting her off her feet with his hug. “Man, is it ever good to see a familiar face.”

Ruby shoved him and he could fling her across the room if he wanted to, but he let her go and stepped back. “You bitched, and moaned, and fought me every step of the way,” Ruby said, furious. “You let your brother _kill me_ and three seconds later you’re moving Hell and Earth to build a demon city and chilling with Lucifer? We are going to have words, Winchester.”

Sam stuck his hands into the pockets of his pants and grinned sheepishly. “I had you brought back,” he offered. “And hey, you have to have died at least once to be on this team.”

“You’re a fucking asshole,” Ruby groused. “You’re lucky you’re pretty and that I got face time with Lucifer to make up for it.” She flipped her hair back over one shoulder and looked him up and down. “So, Sammy Winchester the anti-Christ, huh?”

“Looks like.” She was still angry and Sam guessed he couldn’t really blame her for that. “Dean’s going to be so pissed,” he said and sure enough she cracked a grin, the realization that Dean didn’t know anything yet making her expression positively gleeful.

“Get dressed,” she said. “There’s some stuff I’m supposed to show you. The boss is busy and you’re going to want to get to this ASAP.”

Ruby took him down the main tower, down into where the world became Hell and the windows opened up onto the Pit. Down in one of the lower circles, hidden deep in the bowels of the tower, Ruby stopped outside a room that was so heavily warded that it made Sam’s skin crawl. 

“So, you’ve got kind of a shitty temper,” Ruby said, crossing her arms over her chest. “And if you decide you feel the need to vent, do it somewhere else. You might be the boy king but I’m not your bitch, so grow up and deal with it.”

“What’s in the room?”

Ruby pushed the door open and then got out of Sam’s way.

Maybe she had a point about his temper, Sam thought vaguely, because he really wanted to rip someone a new one about keeping him in the loop. He took several calming breaths instead. Bound to strange wooden symbols – angelic, if Sam was any judge, and he was – like a St. Andew’s cross, chained and ringed in with circles of power were three angels. One that Sam didn’t recognize on the end, then Anna, then Castiel. It was bad enough when he thought Castiel was dead, but to know that he hadn’t been, and had been ignoring his brother for weeks and weeks was enough to make Sam see a little red. 

“They were captured when Lucifer got me out,” Ruby said from somewhere behind Sam, out of his line of fire. 

Sam took another few calming breaths. “What does that have to do with me?”

“You can exorcise demons with your brain, which is awesome for keeping the troops in line, but kind of useless when you’re going to be fighting heaven, not hell.” Ruby’s lecturing tone was just as annoying as it used to be and it made him want to do exactly the opposite of whatever she said, especially now that he knew she played him like a fucking violin the last go around. “Lucifer wants to know if you can kill angels.”

“I don’t need a demon telling me what Lucifer wants,” Sam snapped, knowing he was being petty. When he turned to look at her, she flinched back, but the unimpressed look on her face said that she knew he was being petty too. He’d asked to have her back, there was no reason to be mean to her now she was here. Sam sighed and glanced back at Castiel who was staring at him with a desperate expression that was pretty similar to how he usually looked. “So it’s a massive test then?”

“They nabbed Dean’s angels and you wonder if it’s a test?” Ruby said, wide-eyed with sarcasm. “No, no it’s not.”

Sam scratched thoughtfully at the back of his neck. “Right,” he said finally. 

Castiel looked like he was trying to beam a message into Sam’s brain and Sam figured it was probably something like, “Don’t kill me” or “take me instead” which were pretty much his only two options, but then, knowing Castiel, it could equally have been something like “I find God’s will perplexing and this body rides up in the crotch.” As much as he didn’t want to admit it, Sam could – grudgingly – concede that Castiel did care about his brother in his own intensely strange way and that he had defied heaven to save Dean. And while Sam didn’t want Castiel getting any ideas about where that put him on the totem pole, he didn’t think killing the angel would be a good way of saying thanks.

“Heaven doesn’t want you,” Sam said, unstrapping the gag from around Castiel’s mouth and jaw. “I don’t know about God, but Heaven sure as shit doesn’t. So you have two options; work for me and help me stop the world from ending, or I’m going to have to work on a really good apology for Dean, explaining why I killed you.”

“Dean-” Castiel started and Sam slapped his hand down over Castiel’s mouth.

“Will you help me or not?”

Castiel cut his eyes over at the other two angels and then at Ruby. 

“Don’t look at me,” she said. “I was all excited about Lucifer and now I’m playing second fiddle to the guy who helped kill me while we ride off to save the world. You want clear-cut orders, go back to being Zachariah’s bitch.”

Castiel closed his eyes for a moment and Sam decided to give him to the count of five before the offer was off the table. It was going to be such a pain to explain why Cas hadn’t made it to Dean. But Sam only got to three before Castiel sagged slightly in his chains and nodded. 

Sam let go of his mouth. “Dean is fine,” he said. “I want you to go sit on him for now, report back to me if anything changes.” As Castiel started to frown in a confused sort of way Sam clarified, “Figure of speech, dude.”

“I know that,” Castiel said, clearly annoyed, as Sam unlocked the chains. “But I wondered if perhaps you might not have meant literally. I won’t pretend to understand you, Sam.” He reached out when his hand was freed and pressed his fingertips to the scarring at the hinge of Sam’s jaw. Sam flinched away and Castiel let his hand drop, looking saddened. “I am sorry for what has happened.”

Ruby sidled forwards. “Not going to beg for the lives of the other two?” she asked, keeping Sam between her and Castiel.

Castiel glanced to the side and for the first time, Sam wondered if he was somehow looking _between_. If it wasn’t just evasion, if he was looking to Heaven for reassurance. “No,” he said after a lengthy pause. “My humiliation wouldn’t change their fate.”

Sam abruptly felt tired just looking at Castiel’s weariness. “No,” Sam agreed. “It wouldn’t. Tell Dean I’m okay. Keep him safe.”

Castiel nodded. “Good luck,” he said, and was gone.

Another side to Sam’s transformation, that he had been noticing, was a real lack of impulse control. Ruby wasn’t wrong, he’d always had a fundamentally lousy temper, and he’d always been selfish about who he would share with, and possessive about what he considered his. Apparently it was a really unattractive and near dumpable-material trait and he and Jessica had had several ugly fights about it. Sending Castiel off to watch out for Dean made his insides do unpleasant things. He reminded himself that smoking Anna because she’d put her grabby hands all over his brother and then abandoned him would not be a good thing.

He probably needed to have a good sit-down with himself and spend some time with his increasingly twisted-up feelings about Dean, but Sam would be the first to admit that right before the apocalypse really let loose on humanity probably wasn’t the right time for that. Sam promised himself that he’d get right on that when they’d won the war. And the first step in that direction was getting as many angels on his side as possible.

So Sam talked Anna into joining his side, not that she took that much persuading once he’d laid out their overall plan, and sent her off with his blessing – an actual mark so that Team Hell would know her for a friend – and a warning to keep her hands off Dean. And then there was one.

“You think Lucifer is going to be okay with this?” Ruby asked. “I mean, there were three angels and you let two of them go.”

“It’s my call,” Sam said, feeling that hot flash of ‘don’t you fucking question me’ rise up in him again. It probably had something to do with dealing with Berith’s constant litany of smart-ass remarks all aimed at letting Sam know how unimpressed he was with Sam. Sam had to prove and prove and prove himself to the Fallen and sure, one by one they were getting behind him but he wasn’t about to take shit from a demon he’d already killed once. Even if it was Ruby. By San’s count, she still owed him an apology.

Sam put out his hand and pressed it to the forehead of the bound angel. Ruby backed out of the room, the heavy metal door grinding shut behind her, bolts thrown that wouldn’t cage Sam. Not when he’s part man, part demon, too little of both these days to be bound traditionally. “Go in peace,” Sam said to the angel, even though when he used his powers on demons he took them into himself. The more he killed the stronger he was, feeding on their souls. He wondered what would happen if he could take in the souls of angels. He thought he remembered reading somewhere that angels didn’t have souls.

The angel cried out as it died, like the hiss and scream of a steam whistle and under that was the name of God. The walls blackened with the memory of its wings and Sam collapsed to the floor, panting and shaking and laughing, even as he cried. The true faces of angels kind of had that effect on him when he wasn’t expecting to see them that way. When Ruby crept back in, helping him up, glancing fearfully at the empty vessel dangling from its chains it took her a moment to look Sam in the eye.

“Oh,” she said weakly and dropped down to one knee, leaving him to stagger before steadying himself. “Oh _Sam_.”

In the dark recesses of Hell’s lower circles, in the main tower of the palace that had risen up from the ground, a demon went to one knee in front of the anti-Christ and he put one big hand on her head and stared at her with his beautiful, slanted, golden eyes and told her to get the fuck up already, they had work to do.

*~*~*

The suit Sam was wearing was extremely well cut and it felt like he was going to pop the shoulder seams every time he moved and the tie he had on felt like a noose around his neck. At least Team Hell had some sort of weird aversion to shoes thanks to Lucifer’s habit so no one tried to cram his feet into dress shoes.

“You know you look good,” Ruby said, swatting at his hands when he went to tug at his collar again. “So stop it.”

Nothing if not contrary, Sam gave her an arch look, loosened the tie and popped open the first few buttons on his shirt. She rolled her eyes but didn’t argue. He settled back against his throne, a huge monstrosity of a thing, same gold and bone as the circlet that Sam still hadn’t got used to wearing for more formal occasions. He’d nixed the crown because it pushed his hair into his face and he felt like he was playing dress-up. They’d given him something smaller and he hadn’t been able to say no. The throne wasn’t the most comfortable chair he’d ever sat in, but there had been worse. Lecture halls at Stanford with their tiny little rotating desk-chairs were far worse. 

“We’re rolling in ten, nine, eight…” the demon behind the camera said.

Sam whistled between his teeth. “Joan, c’mere girl,” he said. “Joanie.”

A hellhound slunk over to sit by his feet, and Ruby stepped out of shot as the demon counted silently, “Four, three, two, one.”

The fallen angels had the things they could do, this part was on Sam. He got on the television, on the radio, hijacking every signal, every website, every form of media that used a satellite or signal, broadcasting live from his very own throne room. He put a demon in charge of a Twitter account for him.

Sam smiled for the camera. “Hi,” he said, wondering if Dean was watching, hoping he was with friends. “My name is Sam Winchester, and if I could have your attention for a few minutes, that would be awesome.” 

They’re going to save the world. He had to believe that, that Dean would be on his side, once he’d stopped freaking out. Sam had a plan to get everyone else on board but Dean was so skittish, so set in his ways…He’d make it up to his brother when the dust settled.

“I’m not a hacker, I’m not a terrorist, I’m not here to hurt you,” Sam said. 

Dean would come around. Eventually. He had to. Sam was willing to turn cities to dust to bring Dean home if he had to. Sooner or later Dean’s going to understand and come to him. Dean’s a good brother, a better soldier. He’d see the good Sam was trying to do. He’d survive. He’d be there with Sam. 

Sam smiled a little brighter because of course Dean was watching. He tried to project an air of calm. Dean’s so fucking skittish. 

“If there is something you find difficult to deal with in this message please seek out family, friends, healthcare professionals, or religious leaders. Please remain calm. We’re about to go to war and I wanted to make sure everyone was in full possession of the facts.”

It would all be okay.

Sam would make it be okay.

Hell didn’t exactly have good PR attached to it, but there were those who offered themselves up as meatsuits, and then there were the masses of people who came to fight alongside demons as they were. Hunters. Civilians. The religious, the atheists, the women and children and the certifiably insane. Armies of every country. Vampires, werewolves and fairies – anything supernatural and intelligent enough to realize that losing didn’t just mean the end of humanity, it meant the end of their world too. They all turned out together, arguing and hating each other all the way, but fighting side by side. One third of the angels Fell in that first battle, making up Sam’s major combatants. Several more joined Sam’s side when word got out that their orders weren’t coming from God. Sam got the old gods to come together and join him. The ones who still demanded sacrifice of small towns, the gods of the forests and deserts, the ones hiding in plain sight. Every single solider made a difference.

“No good will come of what Dean and I will do for each other,” Sam said to the Trickster. “That’s what you said. Well, I’m going to prove you wrong, and unless you want your playground to burn, you’ll sign up to help.”

The Trickster, wearing a hideous Hawaiian shirt and a leisure suit, frowned up at Sam. “I tried to stop this already,” he said. “What point do you think I was trying to make? I was trying to stop you from starting all this.”

“The angels would never have let it go,” Sam said dismissively, “war was inevitable. We just would have lost right away. So are you going to help or not?”

On his knees, bound in chains to prevent his powers, the Trickster sighed. “There’s only so much I can do,” he admitted. “Altering the time space of one human is one thing…I can’t do that to angels.”

Sam smirked at him. “I know,” he said. 

“Just so you know something else, Boy King,” the Trickster said, staring at Sam with an intense seriousness that Sam had never seen from him before. “If we do pull this off, I can promise you this: It won’t get you what you want. He’s going to run from you. He’s going to be afraid of you. And no matter how much you want it, no matter how many angels you kill, or demons you make, or battles you win, he’s never, ever going to want you the way you want him.” The Trickster brightened, fake cheer. “So where do I sign up, or is that more of a metaphor? Pucker up loverboy and let’s make a deal.”

For the record, they didn’t kiss. Sam let him loose and he wreaked his old world magic on Heaven and Sam learned firsthand why humans said Loki was bound underground to spare the world his cruelty and humour. A comforting lie. Better than knowing he was still out there.

War came swiftly.

The earth shook from the trumpets of the angels. The sky burned and the oceans turned to blood. Plague and Pestilence stalked the earth and all around the world you could hear the screaming of the dying. Cities crumbled to dust and ash. And in the middle of it Sam walked the blackened ground and led his troops against Heaven.


	2. Two

**Now**

The upshot is that the world doesn’t end. 

A whole lot of shit goes down, sure, but when the dust has settled, and the blood has been mopped up, everything pretty much goes back to normal for the majority of humanity. Except for the part where there’s a huge palace that sits smack dab in the middle of the Kansas plains, rising up like a great black Oz, reminding people that quarreling over religious differences and trying to start wars is liable to get you a massive smack-down from…well, if you want to get biblical, Lucifer is king, but the smack-down would be coming from his prince, which is pretty much the same thing. Lucifer doesn’t do a lot of the actual ruling. It spends most of its time catching up with old friends. 

Dean saw it once, after the war, and Castiel was there with it, still riding poor Jimmy, still in that same battered trenchcoat. Looking at the Devil like he used to look at Dean. And Dean ran and kept running and didn’t look back. Sam first. He had to save Sammy first.

Anyway, Dean thinks there might be an official regency going on, but he avoids Kansas and demon politics like the plague, so he’s not sure. Everyone just calls the prince ‘the prince,’ because it’s considered a) rude to speak his name and b) dangerous because – or at least it’s rumored to be so – that speaking his name means he can find you. Instantly. 

The prince might be all smiles for the cameras these days, shaking hands with presidents and kings and the queen of fucking England, kissing babies and attending film premieres and stupid shit like that, but there’s plenty of footage of him during the war and no one wants to piss him off. So Dean doesn’t even like to think his name. Dean keeps a picture of the prince in order to remind himself not to. It’s one of the ones that in the old days might have been censored to spare the public: the bodies on the ground, the prince’s legs wet to the knee with gore. He’s got a foot planted on the corpse of an angel, its throat ripped out and there’s blood on the prince’s face, almost as black as the scars that twist up and down one arm, over his chest, up one side of his neck, curving along the side of his face, disappearing into his hair. That was the day the prince got hold of an actual flaming angelic sword and went to fucking town, and he’s holding it in that picture, head tipped back, snarling up at something out of shot. There’s what looks like static in the picture making the air around him hazy as he powers up. The only coloured thing, that isn’t black, white, or bloody, is the gold of the prince’s eyes, wide and crazed.

The prince of Hell is Sam. In case anyone missed that memo.

Dean’s working on a plan to help his brother, but it’s been stalled by the fact that he can’t get anywhere close to the prince, and the fact that he has no idea how to separate his brother from whatever crazy shit Lucifer did to make him the anti-Christ. In the meantime, Dean’s been up to his eyeballs in grave dirt laying spirits to rest. A lot of good people died on those battlefields, a lot of innocent bystanders, caught in the crossfire or ridden by demons and angels. He did his time out in the trenches, and when the rest of the world went back to what they had been doing before they were so rudely interrupted, so did Dean.

Dean never thought he’d say that Hell on Earth was a good thing but in reality, apart from the mess left where the worst battles were waged, things are pretty much back to normal. Mostly Hell ignores the usual bullshit humanity does. Crime is still a problem and still pays. Kids still say yes to drugs. Women have still failed to take back the night. The economy is still jacked, especially since most wars have flat out stopped (turns out it’s super-hard to fight when all your soldiers and generals are possessed and the guy in charge of them is giving you options like permanent possession or death). There are still kids starving in Africa so finish your plate. That sort of thing is still going on. 

Kansas is one big cellular dead zone, and supernatural creatures are drawn to the palace like it’s magnetic and they’re paperclips, but bickering for favour from the prince of Hell, squabbling amongst themselves and keeping a trigger-happy watch on every earthly governments keeps the demons pretty busy. And the prince of Hell is kept busy with dignitaries from every religion, including nutbar cults, every government, pilgrims of all breed, and assassination attempts. 

The best part is that when Heaven lost the fight to smite everything they could get their hands on, they mostly took it with good grace – pun intended. Since God hadn’t weighed in, most of them seemed to be taking the loss as a sign they hadn’t acted with His approval. Everyone wins. 

Well, everyone wins except for Dean, which sounds like the beginning of a pity party if he says it like that, but really, he’s doing okay. He’s coping. 

He’s kind of got the small problem of one or two of the heavenly angels that didn’t take their can of whoop-ass as well as their brothers. When the war started, the angels came for Dean and it had been a real pain in the backside keeping them away from him as well as actually doing his fair share of fighting. Dean fought the war on two fronts because they had plans for him that involved him being the meatsuit for Michael. 

And Jimmy’s first-hand account aside, Dean had had no desire to be the vessel that was part of smiting his little brother. No matter how evil his little brother was at the time. Dean had figured that when the war was over they’d leave him alone, but apparently Michael is a really big tipping point and some of them still think if they can get their hooks into Dean, they can restart the war. So when he’s not breaking his back digging up corpses and doing a little salt and burn, he’s running and hiding. Whatever, he’s a big boy, he can take care of himself. He should just be grateful that the prince of Hell is too busy to turn his eye of Argon Dean’s way and join in the hue and cry. Not that his royal highness isn’t making Dean’s life fucking difficult regardless of not being able to give it that personal touch.

You can ward against angels. You can ward against demons. Dean’s got a few more tattoos than he ever thought he’d have but it keeps the fuckers off his back. What you can’t ward against is people having eyes in their heads. You can’t turn the television on without seeing his face, his car, or a picture of his first tattoo. He’s on the news – Search continues for Dean Winchester – Have you seen this man? – Call this hotline. He knows the prince is pissed off. When he got the tattoo that undid the mark on his shoulder allowing him to hide from Castiel, shook Cas’ trail somewhere around Atlanta, and went off the radar, the sun went dark for three days. 

Everyone knows his face. The cost for harbouring him is high, like you disappear into Oz and don’t come back out until they’re sure they’ve tortured every last scrap of information out of you, kind of high. And that’s assuming Hell gets there first. Heaven isn’t nearly half as nice as all that. So yeah, people are scared shitless to see Dean, even though he helped save the world, and even though he’s still fighting the good fight.

He put a glamour on the car, since he’ll be damned (again) before giving up his baby. There’s not a lot he can do about his face, but he’s grown a beard he hates since it came in mostly grey and he wears a lot of hats. It’s been almost a year and a half since the war ended but Dean’s been on the run most of his life, one way or another, he’s had practice. 

“You look like you could use another,” the bartender says to Dean. He’s sitting in a nasty little roadside joint in Maine filled with overweight locals and the bartender’s drunk. It seems like no one let this place in on the fact that there’s been a smoking ban for years and years now and the air is thick with it. Dean examines the dregs of his whiskey. “Yeah, sure,” he says. Fuck it, he’s between jobs, nothing to do but hide from Heaven and his insane little brother. “Hit me.” 

One of the over-weight bleached blondes two seats away from Dean is watching the television and she flaps a hand at the bartender. “Hey, Ed, turn it up.”

Ed glances at the TV and groans. “Christ, Laurie,” he says. “Again?”

She frowns and he obliges. “This one’s new,” she says primly but there’s a smirk somewhere under there.

Dean is way more interested in the whiskey in front of him until he hears the audio track on what it is Laurie wants to watch. He looks up to where the prince of Hell is on the television. Whatever else he does, the prince puts on a damn fine spectacle and his PR department is ridiculous. He’s sitting on his throne, an uncomfortable looking monstrosity, and Hellhounds slaver at his feet. Dean figures the reason all the girls in the bar are suddenly paying attention has less to do with the message de jour and more to do with the fact that the prince’s suit is really well cut. Dean’s not a small guy. He’s tall, thank you very much, but the prince is, Jesus, he’s built like a fucking tank and they’re shooting him from a slight angle so he looks even bigger. So yeah, he’s got a whole lot of support from the ladies. Because that’s how politics should work.

“Since the offer of untold wealth failed, and the interrogation of persons of interest failed, Hell is starting a lottery.” The prince of Hell leans forward, forearms on his knees and the flickering lighting catches the gold of his eyes. He’s making his ‘you can trust me’ face, like he’s some kind of Boy Scout. “Everyone in the world is in it. Every day someone will be chosen at random, they will be brought here, and they will be killed.” One of the hounds makes an excited yelping sound that only reinforces how very not quickly that person is likely to die. The prince sits back and narrows his eyes, like he’s looking at someone, not just a camera. “Every death, every single one, Dean, will be on your conscience. Tick tock Deano, the lottery starts tomorrow.”

Dean downs his whiskey and taps the glass with his ring. “Hey there, Ed,” he says. “Can I get another of those?”

Laurie sighs and rests her chin on her palm, elbow propped on the bar. “Oh boy, I could eat him up with a spoon,” she says. 

“Jesus Christ, lady!” Dean says, because he can’t help himself. “He’s killing people!”

She swivels in her chair, flicks her hair out of her face and gives him a nasty look which takes her from about a seven on the looks scale to about a four. Yeah, she’s overbleached, but she’s pretty enough and frankly, Dean hasn’t dared do more than buy a bottle of lube and spend some quality time with pay per view and his right hand since he went on the run. His standards might be slipping a little. “ _War_ was killing people,” she says. “And the prince stopped it. And his people cured HIV, which was also killing people. And I heard the energy crisis is just about solved, so no more killing the planet. Besides, it’s fair, it’s a lottery, and if Winchester would just turn himself it, it wouldn’t be a problem in the first place.”

“That’s some fucked up logic,” Dean says and tells Ed to leave the bottle. “What if it was you?”

“It’s not going to be me,” Laurie says, dismissive. 

And that’s the genius of the plan. There are so many people on the planet, what are the odds of it being you, or someone you love? No one’s going to complain, they can’t, and anyone who does will be silenced. So everyone else can go on, happy as Larry, thinking that everything’s just fine. The only one who is going to care about each and every death, is Dean. Because he has to, even if no one else will. 

Becoming the anti-Christ made Dean’s little brother really bossy. Not that he wasn’t a major princess before, but this is a whole new level of demanding. Dean’s pretty sure he’d be using the whammy through the TV if he could figure out a way to make that work. Thank goodness for telecommunications and demonic whatsit not being compatible. Dean’s surprised they can even broadcast from the throne room. Maybe it’s a dummy room somewhere else outside of Kansas.

“Do you think he’s still seeing that tart?” Laurie asks her friend, dismissing Dean. “Did I show you my People, or maybe it was US Weekly? Yeah, he was seen having lunch – hang on, I think I have it in my bag.”

When he’s good and drunk, Dean makes his unsteady way over to the decrepit pay phone in the corner, and dials. “Hey,” he says loudly. More of a slur really. “You’re a fucking bitch, you know that?” He ignores the nasty looks he’s getting from most of the patrons, takes off his baseball cap and scratches at the top of his head, lets the cap slip out of his hand and doesn’t bother to pick it up. “Yeah? Well fuck you, Sammy, I have good reasons and you know it. So how about you take your lottery shove it up your–”

The door to the bar slams open, blown half off its hinges, and Dean puts the phone down. Sam stands in the doorway, crackling with energy and the lights all pop overhead, the television shorting out. He has a crazed look in his eyes that isn’t actually new. He’s not in the suit, he’s barefoot, in jeans and that stupid greyhound t-shirt he likes so much. Not that it fits him properly anymore.

“Throw it out,” Dean says. “It’s like that fucking Jetsons shirt you wouldn’t let me toss.” He gets that Sam was four years old at the time, and that out of context, he’s probably not making a lot of sense, but whatever, he’s trashed and in some serious shit now.

Sam is across the room in a flat second, the tables and chairs in his way thrown to the side without Sam so much as glancing at them. The patrons of the bar start ducking for cover then, the idiots. For a second Dean thinks Sam is going to shake him, or hit him. Instead, Sam puts his hands around Dean’s neck and something heavy clicks into place. Then Sam’s even more up in his space, crushing him in what has to be one of the most painful hugs Dean has ever had.

“I oughta fuck you up,” Sam mutters, mouth right next to Dean’s ear. He’s sweating, dark patches under his arms and at the collar of his shirt and the heat’s just pouring off of him. All the hair on Dean’s arms stands on end. “Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?” He doesn’t wait for a reply, just hauls Dean out of the bar so fast Dean’s head spins. Behind them, the phone lets out a screech, like an old modem dialing up, and dies.

Dean thinks he hears an “Oh my God, was that Winchester?” before he’s rudely dragged out the broken door.

“Which one is the Impala?” Sam demands and Dean figures he’s going down this round so he just points. Sam’s seeing a beat-up blue 1997 Honda with doors a different colour from the body but that illusion will wear off when he’s inside the car. Sam shoves Dean into the backseat, and Dean narrowly misses clocking his head on the way in. Sam gets in the front, throws the car into gear and peels out of the lot like something’s chasing him.

“Sam,” Dean says finally, getting his drunk ass coordinated enough to sit up. 

Sam doesn’t even glance in the rear-view. “Sleep it off,” he says, low and angry. And Dean’s out like a light, collapsing like someone cut his strings.

When he comes to he’s got one mother of a hangover and it’s dark out. Sam’s still driving hell bent for leather but there are four cars flanking them. Big fuck off SUVs and Dean can hear the baying of hellhounds. Looks like the armed escort showed up then. Great. He swallows hard to work some spit into his dry mouth and his Adam’s apple bumps against something. Dean puts his hand up to his throat and then nearly pulls a muscle scrambling over the front seat and wrenching the rearview around so he can get a good look at what Sam has done to him.

“What the fuck is this?” he says and he can hear how weirdly high-pitched his voice is. 

Sam glances over and grins at him, black teeth tinged red in the rear lights of the nearest SUV. It’s not a very nice smile. “If you won’t give it up to me, I have to make sure I can track you somehow. Collar stays on until you stop acting like you have any say in how this goes down.”

It’s not just a collar Sam’s put on him, it’s an inch wide band of gold or bronze – the light’s too shitty to tell – with more angelic writing on it than Dean’s ever seen on one artifact. It’s a little warmer than body temperature and it’s right up against his skin, he can’t get his fingers under it at all. “Goddamnit, Sam!” Dean says, trying to wedge his fingers under somehow.

Sam reaches over and slaps his hands away. “Don’t do that,” he says. “You know it’s not coming off until I take it off.” He angles the rearview back to how it should be. “Be grateful I didn’t use a posture collar.” The tone of his voice says he’s still thinking about it.

“I don’t…” Dean rubs at his throat then wipes his hands on his jeans. Whatever the metal is, it has enough mojo running through it that it feels slick and alien. “I don’t even know what that is,” he says.

Sam eyeballs Dean and the metal fucking expands, the bottom edge resting where shoulder meets throat and the top edge snug under his jaw so his head is forced back, just a little. “That,” Sam says. “So are you going to shut up about it or what?”

Dean flinches back, tipped awkwardly in the seat because he can’t bend his neck and he needs to be as far away as possible from Sam right now. “Cut it out,” he says weakly. “I haven’t seen you in two years and you pull this shit on me?”

That was the wrong thing to say. Sam’s mouth thins into a pissy line and the Impala hurtles faster down the highway, dogs howling and snapping at each other playfully outside the windows. Chasing cars. Jesus. “And whose fault is that?” Sam demands. “You know what, Dean, _fuck you_.”

They sit in silence for what feels like another mile or so, streetlamps sparking as they blaze past, Sam’s anger making the radio spit static. Finally Dean can’t take it, slouching as much as he can, sitting on his hands so he doesn’t lose his shit and break his nails off trying to do something about the collar. “Hey,” he says quietly. “Sam.”

“No,” Sam snaps. “You can just stay like that until we get home.” It’s another six miles before Dean is brave enough to ask how long that’s going to be. It doesn’t sit well with him, but Sam’s not doing so good these days, and Dean really doesn’t want to make him angry. Angrier. “We’re driving from Maine to Kansas because I’m being nice about the fact that you don’t want demons driving your car,” Sam says. “How long do you think it’s going to be?” 

Dean shuts up and neither of them says anything else, for hours, until Oz appears on the horizon and Sam relaxes. He rolls down his window and fiddles with the tape deck until Journey comes on, his powers probably because Dean never could make it work anywhere near Kansas, and then Sam slings one long arm over the back of the seat, fingers brushing over Dean’s hair, where his head is resting against the bench. Dean closes his eyes and counts breaths so he doesn’t do something stupid like telling Sam to take his fucking hands off him. “What do you call it?” Dean asks, because he can’t stand the silence anymore.

“What?”

“Oz,” Dean says and normally he’d nod at the city ahead, but he can’t, head jerking uselessly, turning it into a whole body shake.

Sam’s fingers twitch against his hair. “Pandemonium,” he says. “It’s from–”

“I know what it’s from,” Dean says irritably. It might’ve taken him a while, and he might’ve enlisted a little help from a smoking hot co-ed who was more than happy to read it with him, and, you know, fuck him, but he got through Paradise Lost a while ago. Yeah, that’s not something he wants to share with Sam right now. Isobel Warner, probably off getting her PhD now or something. Yeah. Not someone Sam needs to know about.

Instead of being a little bitch about it though, Sam just nods, pleased, and asks, “Is that Oz like the wizard of, or like HBO prison rape?”

Dean hadn’t even thought of that show. “Both,” he says and looks away out the window because he’d rather look at the hellhounds than at his new home.

Sam drags his thumb over the skin behind Dean’s ear and rubs at where the collar stops under his jaw. “I kind of like Oz,” he says. The collar shrinks back down to the size it was before and Dean sucks in air like he couldn’t breathe before, even though he could. He leans forwards and puts his head in his hands and Sam, the bastard, starts rubbing his back.

*~*~*

The outside of Pandemonium is coherent in style and design and it gives one hell, ha ha, of a first impression. Not that Dean knows anything about architecture, but it looks like one person designed it and that’s all she wrote. The towers, the spires, the holy fucking shit of the design, it all goes together. Purse, belt, and shoes, or whatever it was Cassie used to say. The inside is another story.

“We’re remodeling,” Sam says, rolling his eyes. From what to what is anyone’s guess and Dean isn’t planning on asking. Practically every room, every hallway, has a different theme. Periods of history recreated, from the Stone Age to space age to office space and back again. “You can go anywhere but the library, storage and sub storage,” Sam says, striding along, one hand wrapped around Dean’s left wrist. 

Dean’s pretty sure Sam can track him now. He didn’t put the collar on just because he’s overly possessive and kind of fucked up about Dean, although that’s true enough. With this thing on, there’s no witchcraft, ritual or binding that’ll hide Dean from him. But not like Sammy’s about to give that up just because Dean can navigate a hallway without getting lost. “Any lower than that and, well, it’s pretty much just Hell after sub-storage,” Sam rambles on, like a tour guide. “So, just…anywhere else.”

“How about the west wing?” Dean quips helplessly. “Not forbidden?”

Sam looks back at Dean then, and he’s just sort of letting Sam drag him along, a reluctant Eurydice. Dean doesn’t need the dismayed expression on his brother’s face to know he looks terrible. He’s unkempt and kind of dirty, and the beard makes him look older, more like their dad. The weary, tired look on his face makes him look more like their dad, too. Sam visibly forces a laugh and says “West wing is fine there, Belle.”

They get to a huge ugly What the Fuck of a door done in the style of the outside of the towers and Sam hesitates, one hand on a door handle, the other resting at the small of Dean’s back. “The décor is kind of…hellish. If you can’t deal with the room, we can go somewhere else, I won’t be mad. I am gonna get pissed off if you don’t tell me and wig out later, though. Okay?”

“For fuck’s sake, Sam,” Dean mutters, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Okay, yeah, sure.”

The inside of Sam’s rooms look a lot like the outside of the palace and the main tower. It’s not like Hell in the sense that there’s no fire, no writhing souls or whatever, but it’s all black wood and beaten gold and there may or not be bits of human skeletons as part of the furniture.

It’s not homey, that’s for sure.

“I’m still not sure if the skulls are ever so slightly tacky or not, it’s verging on it, I’m certain,” Sam says, eager, like he expects Dean to be happy about all this, “and it’s kind of dark, but the mattress is perfect, and dude, feather pillows and duvet, and you’ve got to see the bathroom, it’s got a Jacuzzi tub.”

Dean doesn’t want to know whose feathers stuffed Sam’s bedding so he looks around at the rest of the room, then double-takes and backs up so fast he nearly falls over. “Get that thing the fuck away from me,” he says.

There’s a hellhound lying on a rug that looks like it used to be the pelt of some creature Dean’s never seen before.

“Joanie,” Sam says, and the hellhound lifts her head and yawns at them. “I named her for you,” Sam snaps his fingers so the dog gets up and comes closer. “Joan, after Joan Jett.” The dog barks at the sound of her own name and Dean scrambles back but Sam gets hold of Dean’s arm and holds him where he is as the hellhound trots over to them.

“Sam,” Dean says, voice cracking. “Please, please, man, don’t. I can’t.” Joan sniffs at him, nose bumping into Dean’s crotch. 

Sam heaves an epic sigh. “I like my dog,” he says. “She’s not going to hurt you, so let her say hello and then you two can ignore each other or not, as you please.”

Dean jerks against his hold and Sam shakes him a little, “Dean,” he says, laying on the whammy. Dean can’t help but look at his brother and then Sam leans over and kisses him. Kisses him, square on the mouth. Like that’s not just adding seriously fucked up on top of seriously fucked up. “She won’t hurt you. I wouldn’t bring you here to hurt you.”

Sam kissed Dean like that once before, when Sam was ten and they’d been watching some Lifetime bullshit on TV because Sam wanted to see it. To this day Dean’s pretty sure that the whole freaking station is run by demons because he had to sit his brother down at the kitchen table and, at fourteen, gave Sam the longest, most detailed version of The Talk – including all relevant details about girls, what girls liked, and how to carry on the Winchester tradition of being a total hotass so in the end you’d wind up with someone classy and gorgeous like mom – that he could come up with until Sam was tomato red, practically combusting with embarrassment. But that was that and Sam never did it again and Dean had spent the last twenty-odd years being grateful that, just for once, it was nothing but easy to do the right thing.

Dean shoves Sam away. “Bullshit,” he snarls, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His hand is shaking. His whole body is shaking. “Fucking _bullshit_ , Sam look at yourself.” 

Joan, bored of Dean, whines up at Sam and then she gets bored of him too and wanders off, past them out of the room and into the hall. Dean’s breathing sounds like sobbing and he’s really not okay but he keeps his eyes on his brother. Keep your eye on the biggest threat in the room, their dad used to say. Don’t forget what else is out there, but if one thing is more likely to hurt you than another, make damn sure you’ve got your eye on it.

Sam’s looking at Dean with this predatory, barroom smile that Dean is pretty sure he himself has used on a hundred girls in the past. Having Sam look at him that way has Dean wiping at his mouth again.

“Why don’t you get cleaned up?” Sam suggests with another sigh, and the moment is gone. “Lose the beard, Grizzly Adams.”

“I look awesome,” Dean says automatically. “You’re just jealous.”

He can’t figure out what else he’s supposed to do, so he goes into the bathroom and it’s about the size of most motel rooms they’ve stayed in. Dean decides a healthy dose of denial is what’s going to get him through this whole situation. He pretends he’s not impressed and a little freaked out by the sheer size of Sam’s new quarters, he showers and pretends that he isn’t wearing Sam’s fucking collar (after about ten minutes of trying to wedge a nail file under it and only managing to scratch the hell out of his neck), and he shaves, finally, pretending that it’s not nice to see his own face in the mirror instead of John’s ghost. 

Sam’s sitting on the bed, watching a massive television screen, channel surfing without interest, when Dean comes out, towel clutched around his waist because his goddamn clothes are gone. Sam’s stripped off the greyhound shirt and hasn’t bothered to replace it with anything else and his jeans sit so low on his hips that Dean can tell he’s not wearing underwear. There is way too much nakedness going on for Dean’s comfort. He scratches at the collar, studiously examining the bizarre animal-skin carpet that the hellhound had been lying on. Sam’s stubborn, not patient, and Dean figures he can outwait his brother in this game of “trying to make Dean uncomfortable.”

Some rerun of CSI or Law and Order is on – still, even after the apocalypse they still keep making them, there’s a CSI:Kansas now – and Dean listens to a man in a bulletproof vest reveal some boring bit of personal history that makes the case tough for him until Sam turns the television off and turns to stare at him instead. Dean’s pretty sure there’s a rule somewhere that you don’t look at your own brother like that when he’s in nothing but a towel. And if you do, you be subtle about it. They were raised better than that, God damn it. But come to think about it, there’s probably a rule somewhere about a Winchester not being the freaking second in command to Lucifer. Dean hitches up the towel, self-consciously.

“So, is it that you think Dad would be more pissed off by me saving the world than he would by me wanting to fuck you into next week?” Sam asks, sounding amused. “Because I know he’d want the world saved and I’m not so sure he’d be that phased by the rest of it. He was kind of screwed up about keeping everything in the family; he might’ve been okay with us.”

“Stay out of my head,” Dean snaps. “And stop talking shit.”

Sam looks vaguely contrite. “You think really loudly, and I’m not used to having to block you,” he says. “C’mon Dean, it’s not as bad as all that. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.”

“There is no mountain,” Dean says, not quite sure how the conversation got so away from him. He just wants his pants back, is that so much to ask for? And how the fuck did they go from talking about nothing to Sam talking about incest? “There’s no molehill either,” Dean insists. “Where are my jeans?”

He’s pretty sure Sam is just being a dick when he sits up from his slouch against the pillows piled up at the head of the bed and says, “Is the demon Jesus thing the mountain or is that the incest?”

“What incest?” Dean says, and his voice is doing that awkwardly high-pitched thing again. “There is no incest!” He tells himself that he’s going to mock the heck out of Sam for this when he gets his brother back to normal again. ‘Hey remember that time you were evil and kidnapped me, and then announced that you wanted to fuck me? Good times, right?’ Maybe not.

Sam rolls his eyes indulgently. “It’s been a long day, Dean, why don’t we just get some sleep and then we can talk tomorrow?”

Dean feels sick to his stomach, he doesn’t feel tired. There’s this terrible thing in front of him that used to be his baby brother and, God, he just wants Sam back. How’s he supposed to sleep when his biggest fuck-up, his biggest failure for his family, is right there?

Sam winces. “Boxers in the second drawer on the left.” He’s silent while Dean digs out a pair that look like they won’t bunch in weird ways and pulls them on. “It’s still me, Dean,” Sam says. “Just give it a chance.”

“Stay out of my fucking head,” Dean snaps, folding his arms over his bare chest.

“I’m trying,” Sam snaps back before his shoulders slump and he rubs a hand over the scars on the side of his face. “Just get some rest, okay?”

He gets off the bed and Dean’s really not interested in sleeping on something that’s made out of human bones and the feathers of dead angels but he’s spent a lot of time in the past few years making small compromises for the big picture, so he crawls up onto the mattress and slides in under the duvet. Sam’s not wrong, it is really comfortable. Creepy as fuck, but comfortable.

The lights go out and Dean tries not to tense up. Now is not the time to show fear but he’s totally screwed; no weapon, no nothing and for fuck’s sake, he’s not about to kill Sam, that’s not...He’s not going to do that. There’s the soft whump of Sam’s jeans hitting the wood floor and then Sam is getting up on the bed with Dean. Dean squeezes his eyes shut and starts mentally humming Metallica as Sam presses up behind him, breath hot on the back of Dean’s neck, one arm jammed under Dean’s head, the other heavy over Dean’s chest.

“Sammy,” Dean says, pleading. Sam has one hand curved over the collar, over Dean’s throat, he’s got his hips pressed right up against Dean and he’s hard. This wasn’t even the reason that Dean was on the run from Sam. He’d thought it couldn’t get much worse. That’ll teach him to be so freaking optimistic.

Sam’s sucking in deep breaths and Dean realizes that Sam is smelling him. “Yeah,” Dean says, deciding it wouldn’t kill him to give a little. If he’s going to help his brother, he needs Sam to think they’re okay. He puts his hand over Sam’s forearm and mentally hums Enter Sandman as hard as he can. “I missed you, too.” Apart from the fact that Sam has a boner and Dean’s terrified, it’s actually not that bad. Dean actually catches himself relaxing slightly and hates himself just a little for being so stupid over Sam.

Just because he’s got Sam right there with him, doesn’t mean their problems are solved. He should have learned that lesson the year he got back from Hell.

Sam presses a little closer to Dean’s back. “Castiel will be pleased to see you,” Sam offers. “And Bobby’s coming for the conference I’m having in a little over a month. He keeps asking after you.”

The real bitch of the whole situation is that Dean’s totally on his own. Yeah, even Cas and Bobby are with Sam on this one. Castiel because he’d been floundering like a total moron trying to figure out what he was supposed to do if he wasn’t serving Heaven and Sam, as it turned out, came in a pretty close second. And Bobby, well, Bobby couldn’t argue with the greater good and the world not ending. But Dean was pretty sure Sam had used the whammy on him. Anyway, it wasn’t Bobby’s brother who had decided that the world was a mess and he just needed to rule it, or whatever.

Sam kisses the patch of skin behind Dean’s ear. “I never knew your head was so noisy,” he says. “Go to sleep, Dean.”

Dean doesn’t even have time to wonder how much Sam can see what he’s thinking, before he’s dreaming about driving the Impala down some endless mid-west two-lane highway, nothing but corn on either side of the road, Sam next to him. In the dream, he knows it’s Sam’s fifth birthday and his brother is small and round-cheeked, staring up at Dean, clutching a pair of adult Sam’s oversized sneakers in his arms. The rearview has been ripped off so Dean doesn’t have to see the angels chasing them. The radio plays nothing but Bryan Adams. 

It’s better than the dream about the day the Leviathan washed up dead on the shore and ruined the California beaches with its rotting, bloated corpse. That one’s more of a memory anyway.

*~*~*

Dean wakes up with “Do I have to say the words” stuck in his head. He’d had no idea he could sing the whole song. He wishes he didn’t know that about himself. On the plus side, he also wakes up alone. No Sam in the bed, no Joan freaking Jett the hellhound on the rug. Joan Jett, Jesus, Sam probably thinks he’s being cute.

There’s breakfast waiting on a side table and when Dean opens the closet, looking for something he can wear, he finds all the clothes he thought he’d lost for good when he’d had to book out of Spring City, Tennessee without his stuff because the motel he’d been staying at was swamped with demons all looking for him. He’d feel better with a few layers between him, and Oz, and his brother, but it’s too fucking hot for all that, so he sticks to one t-shirt and a buttondown with the sleeves rolled up. Sam’s taken his gun, the knife he’d had on him, and the gris-gris he’d had knotted around his ankle. He figures deodorant and a lighter would be better than nothing, but a quick search reveals the only deodorant is roll-on and Sam’s taken his freaking lighter too.

Loaded up on toast and beans because he no way trusts the meat or the eggs, and unarmed and grossly unprepared, Dean decides he’s going to have to go out and assess the terrain. Escape might be useless, but he can look for a way to make it a possibility, or even something to help him get his brother back to the way he was. He’s not holding his breath, but Dean figures he’s owed a little good luck on Sam’s behalf.

It’s not likely there are many demons who would risk Sam’s punishment if they hurt him, and Dean might not like it, but the collar is going to be his free pass in these halls. It’s the fallen angels he’s worried about, and the humans. Well, mostly the humans who work for Sam just sort of weird him out, and he saw the religious mania they were capable of, sacrificing themselves in front of angels on Sam’s command, but they’re not going to hurt him either. Dean’s also heard rumours about all sorts of other things living in the palace: small gods, werewolves, vampires, the fae. He really doesn’t want to run into any of those.

Dean’s right leg is feeling kind of stiff so he takes a minute to stretch it out. It got pretty chewed up at the battle of Marked Tree (Arkansas), and despite Sam’s ability to knock Dean out cold, even a sound night’s sleep can leave it cramped up. It doesn’t make Dean feel better that he buried his share of angels there, his leg is still fucked up, and he’s still having to deal with it trapped in Oz, instead of on the road with Sam.

When Dean finally stops pussying about and leaves the room, the hallway is deserted. Moving like if someone sees him, he’s a dead man, Dean cracks open a few of the nearest rooms and only finds abandoned bedrooms, weird living rooms in various historical styles, and nothing capable of prying off, or cutting through the collar. By the time Dean’s totally lost in the maze of corridors, some of which don’t go anywhere, his hands are scraped and sore and his neck is a bloody mess. The collar, on the other hand, isn’t even scratched. He also hasn’t found anything useful. He’s seen a few demons, which he avoided, but this section of Oz seems deserted. Either nothing wants to be that close to Sam or Sam doesn’t want anything that close to him. 

Dean finds the throne room, sometime around when his stomach starts telling him it’s time for lunch and gets about two inches back out of the room before he nearly trips over one of the most terrifying women he’s ever met. She’s taller than he is, built like a brick shithouse, if a brick shithouse looked like a Greek goddess, and has one of those flaming angelic swords stuffed into a sheath on her belt. She winks at him. “C’mon, cupcake,” she says, “you look seriously lost and I’ve got a standing date with Oprah and some powdered goodness.”

“Uh,” Dean says and then realizes that Chuck is standing next to her, looking incredibly disgruntled and hungover, even though it’s got to be after noon. 

Chuck gives him a half-assed wave. “That’s Suriel,” he says, scratching at his beard. There’s a scar like a smeared handprint on his face, like the one Dean has on his shoulder, from where one archangel got close enough to try and kill him before Chuck’s archangel kicked its ass.

He’d known that Chuck had survived the war. Sam had somehow managed to get him and his archangel on side and Chuck had spent most of the war holed up in Oz, Sam’s very own spy into Heaven’s plans. The gal who probably could give Sam and run for his money in the arm-wrestling department is his archangel. Dean’s seen several of them now and they somehow always manage to pick vessels that are meek and unassuming. Except for Suriel apparently.

“Uh,” Dean says again. “Where the heck did you find a vessel that size?”

Suriel laughs and slaps him on the back hard enough to make him take an involuntary step forwards. “You’re adorable,” she says. “C’mon, I got doughnuts.”

They might not be willing to help him with Project Save Sam, but Chuck has Neosporin for his neck and Suriel has doughnuts. On top of that, it’s really, really good to see a familiar face. As soon as Dean’s put a moratorium on Chuck rehashing any of the battles Dean fought, and they just sit quietly and let Oprah do her thing on the TV, it’s all good. Dean’s working on his third doughnut and a way to ask Suriel if there’s any way to unmake an anti-Christ when outside the window the sky cracks open with lightning and the television shorts out. Suriel rolls her eyes. “Three, two-” she says and before she gets to one, before the thunder even has a chance to rumble, Sam’s all up in their space, dragging Dean up off the sofa, glaring daggers at Suriel and Chuck.

“Unbunch your panties,” Suriel says. “You’re not going to lose him with all that.” She gestures at Dean’s throat and Sam relaxes slightly.

“A little warning,” he says in low, dangerous tones, “would be appreciated.”

Suriel stuffs an old fashioned glaze into her mouth. “Gotcha,” she says, around her mouthful.

And then Sam’s manhandling Dean out of the room into a hallway done in the style of what Dean thinks might be early Tudors if Showtime hadn’t been lying about how it looked back then. “I don’t want you running off again,” Sam says. “I want to know where you are.”

“You do know where I am,” Dean says. “What, you want a freaking status update every time I leave your bedroom? I don’t think so, dude.”

“You were gone for years!” Sam bellows, shoving Dean. “If I want to know where you are every minute of every day then you will let me know where you are every fucking minute of every fucking day.” He punctuates his shouting with more little, painful shoves and Dean finally just hauls off and punches Sam in the face because Sam’s had it coming for a while. Dean’s fully expecting to get slugged right back, but Sam’s powers slam against him instead, pinning him against the wall. It’s not that big a deal, all things considered, it barely even hurt, but it’s a little too much like the eight million other times that some demon has done that to him and Dean freaks out.

He’d thought the hellhound was bad, but having Sam use his powers on him sends Dean into a full-blown PTSD panic attack and he can’t breathe or think about anything but the need to get away. He comes back to himself sitting on the floor, head between his knees, Sam’s arms around him, rubbing one of his shins and his back. “You’re all right,” Sam’s saying. “You’re all right.”

The stone floor is warm under Dean’s ass, and Sam’s a giant furnace. He feels burned everywhere he’s being touched and he shoves at Sam, panting, “Get off, get off me,” until there’s a respectable few feet between them.

The thing is, it’s not like Dean is some delicate flower that needs protecting. Dean fought the war, same as everyone else. He’d had his own garrison of soldiers; hunters, witches, psychics, civilians with enough skill and imagination to keep them alive…They’d been the best of the fucking best, riding in to save the day into the worst of the warzones. And he’d led them, he’d fought, if not _for_ Sam, then mostly on his side since it was Hell that was fighting for humanity. He’d waded through angels and demons and every other fucking thing, he’d laid siege to towns and held towns against siege. He’s a goddamn war hero.

He’s a goddamn war hero.

“I know,” Sam says and doesn’t try to touch Dean again. “I’m sorry, man, I shouldn’t’ve…you’ve been through enough shit.” He puts one hand on the floor right next to Dean’s, leaning forwards. “That’s what freaks me out. I just thought that after all that time I’d get to stop worrying about you. Not knowing where you are, if you’re okay, it’s been making me crazy.”

Dean scrubs his face with his sleeve. “You’re out of your freaking mind,” he says but he puts a hand over Sam’s and lets his little brother hold on. If this is what Sam needs to be less crazy, if this is what Dean has to do to get Sammy back, he’ll do it. He’ll do just about anything.

*~*~*

After Dean’s little meltdown, Sam backs off. He doesn’t yell about the obvious fact that Dean tried to get the collar off, he doesn’t yell when Dean starts catching cat-naps so can avoid sharing a bed with him, he doesn’t get angry when Dean gets into a full on, knock-down, drag-out, try to kill you fight with Ruby the day he sees her for the first time, (which he totally would have won if he hadn’t been pulled off her by, like, eight more demons; she wasn’t even trying to fight back). In fact, the more Dean tries to get away, the nicer Sam is about it, and it’s worse than if he’d just laid down the demonic law. At least if he did that, Dean would know what was what. He could stop waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Maybe Sam’s just off planning for the big political conference he’s planning, but Dean doesn’t think even that could possibly eat up all the hours in Sam’s day. If nothing else, Sam is really, really good at getting shit done, especially now, and he literally has armies of demons to do most of the work for him. No, Dean’s sure that Sam is just fucking with him.

Someone has to give. Odds are not good that that someone is going to be Sam but Dean doesn’t have time to play whatever mind games Sam’s working on today, so after over a week of Sam being far too nice, Dean makes his way up the tower and slips out onto one of the balconies that stud the outside. He’s not thrilled to find Sam there already.

“What are you doing out here?” Dean asks. They’re up high enough that the wind whips past the tower hard enough to make Dean’s eyes water. He’s not a huge fan of the balconies, if he’s honest, but even being really, terrifyingly high up over the ground seemed better than being stuck inside.

Sam shrugs and gives him a sheepish smile. “Surveying my kingdom,” he says. His hair is blowing in his face, hiding the gold of his eyes and the scarring on his face, and he looks so much like he used to. “Giving you space.”

Dean keeps his back close to the door. There’s no freaking way he’s going anywhere near the railing. “Yeah, man,” he says. “Real generous.”

He’s expecting Sam to get angry. He wants Sam to get angry since it seems to be Sam’s go to way of dealing with anything else that he doesn’t like. It’s tended to get him what he wants, so Dean doesn’t know why he’s surprised that that’s the way things have turned out. Instead Sam looks at him with these big, sad eyes and it’s kind of breaking Dean’s heart that he can’t even remember what Sam’s eyes used to look like. 

“What would make you happy?” Sam asks. “I mean, I know you don’t like any of this.” He waves a hand to encompass Oz and himself in a vague sort of way. “But there’s not really anything you or I can do about that, it’s just the way it all turned out. So you gotta tell me, Dean, because you’re miserable and I’m not an idiot, I know that. I want you to be happy.”

Dean wants a lot of things, and he’s never thought of himself as a demanding sort of guy, but yeah, maybe he’s been setting his expectations a little high. He wants their mom to never have sold Sam to demons. He wants Sam not to be the prince of Hell. He wants their dad back. He wants to have not spent most of the past six years feeling like a failure. He slumps against the door. “I don’t know,” he admits. It’s been a long time since he had any goals other than, “survive today,” and Sam’s trying to be a good guy, which is important. Dean’s seen plenty of evidence that his little brother is still in there, still trying to do what’s right, and he’s going to need to work with that.

Sam nods enthusiastically. “Okay,” he says. “That’s…Just think about it, okay? I’ll give you space if you want, but I’d really like it if we could, I don’t know, talk about it. Work something out together.”

“We can’t do that if you keep going all dungeon master on me,” Dean warns, tapping the collar. “You want to talk, fine, but you have to play fair. Talking, not that you know this, means both people have something to say, and compromise is reached. I love you, man, but you’re a demanding little bitch and I’m no good at saying no to you.”

When Sam smiles the world seems a little bit brighter. Dean turns away because he’s pretty sure that now, the world _is_ a little bit brighter when Sam smiles like that, but he can’t honestly tell. It’s always been that way for him.

“I want onion rings,” Sam says abruptly. “Like, nasty, roadside, onion rings.” Dean turns around again and Sam’s holding up the keys to the Impala. “You wanna sneak out like celebrities and go slum it with the commoners?”

“No body guards?”

“Nope.”

“No demons or, angels, or hellhounds?”

“Nope.” Sam tosses him the keys. “Remember that place in Dinosaur, Colorado? It’s still standing.”

And for a few hours, it’s awesome. For one, they’re in a town called Dinosaur and Dean got to drive for a good couple of hours to get there. They bicker over Dean’s cholesterol when Dean eats what might have been nearly half a pie and he kicks Sam’s shins under the table when he tries to get in on the action. Sam grins at Dean and even though his teeth are black and people are starting to stare from other tables, Sam isn’t paying them any attention. He’s ragging on Dean about an old embarrassing hunt that he’d been sworn never to talk about again, and the onion rings he’d wanted are making him gassy. Dean hits on the waitress and Sam makes faces at him when she isn’t looking. 

It’s perfect. It’s the best afternoon that Dean has had in years and he can’t stop grinning, he feels reckless and powerful and he wants to glue Sam to something, tie his shoelaces together, something so Sam gets that “what the fuck” look on his face before he realizes he’s been had. He punches the gas and they roar out of that diner, windows down, Foghat on the tape deck at eardrum bursting levels.

The good feeling lasts most of the way back to Oz, until Sam turns the music down. “I want you with me at the conference,” he says and just like that he’s the prince of Hell again and Dean’s stuck wanting nothing to do with it. “You’re my brother, and this is a big deal for me, and I want you there.”

Telling Sam no hasn’t historically worked out very well for Dean, so he tries another angle. “C’mon, running Oz is your thing. You don’t want me getting in the way.”

He thought it was pretty smooth. Sam doesn’t agree, Dean can tell in the way his jaw clenches up and he starts drumming his fingers on his thigh. “You wouldn’t be in the way if you’d take part,” he says crossly. “I’m not asking you to stand there and be eye-candy, Dean. I’m asking you to get involved.”

When Dean swallows he can feel the pressure of the collar. Sometimes he can pretend it away but right now it’s all he can think about. “You know how I feel about it,” he says. “Hashing this out is just going to piss you off, so can we just have a nice afternoon for once?”

“Pull over,” Sam says and the tape deck is starting to make horrible sounds, so Dean turns it off and does as he’s told. He doesn’t want Sam fucking up the car with his powers. Sam’s been taking himself off a lot, which has been his way of not blowing up at Dean, and they’re stuck in the middle of nowhere. Dean wonders if he’s going to get a good look at the anti-Christ this time.

They sit by the side of the road in a tense, unhappy silence and Dean’s expecting a lot of things. He is not expecting Sam to grab him by the back of the neck and drag him in for a kiss. It comes as less of a surprise than it should though. Dean puts his hands on either side of Sam’s face and pushes him gently away.

“Fuck,” Sam says, sounding furious and weirdly lonely. He gets out of the car and goes to stand in the scrubby grass, staring out down the highway towards the spires of Oz rising up over the horizon.

Dean gives him a minute and then gets out of the car, too, leaning back against the hood, hands in the pockets of his jacket. “You wanna tell me what’s up with that?” he asks.

Sam doesn’t turn to look at him. “You want to tell me what’s up with you being so bent out of shape about the fact I saved the world? What more do you want me to do to prove I’m not evil?”

It’s a nice day out, warm and sunny, and the breeze just smells of grass and a little like the cows they passed a while back. Some places, closer to the major battlefields, still reek of dead bodies. There’s a bird singing it’s heart out somewhere nearby and Dean almost misses the days when they were standing in places a lot like this, arguing about if John was or was not an obsessive son of a bitch. Dean pushes off from the car and stands next to his brother.

“You did just kiss me,” he points out mildly. “And you’re not just letting demons possess people, you’re actively ordering it sometimes. You’re just letting Hell run loose. And I get that you stopped the world from ending, I do, I’m proud of you, but power corrupts, man, and it’s not doing you any favours.”

Sam glances over at him. “You’re proud of me?” he asks, sounding incredulous.

Dean stares up at the sky, sighing. “Yeah, well, don’t let it go to your head. Just because you saved the world once – and with some dubious freaking tactics – doesn’t mean you get to fuck it all up now.”

Sam knocks their shoulders together. “We saved the world,” he says. 

The day is so close to being good again until Sam says, “It’s not a demon thing, me wanting to kiss you.” He reaches out and brushes his fingers over the Dean’s collar. “You know what’s funny; you’re the only one now who ever says no to me. Have been for years.” Dean takes a step back, shaking his head and Sam follows after him, backing Dean up across the field. “Why not? Why can’t I have you? You’ve given me everything, why won’t you let us have this?” Dean can’t answer, his throat feels like it’s full of his heart and he just keeps shaking his head, like that’s going to stop Sam. “Why won’t you give me your soul?”

Dean stops so suddenly that Sam actually walks right into him and they both stagger for a second. “You what?” Dean says.

Dean might be the one who’s supposed to be coming up with a list of the things he wants but the only list he can think of is a list of the things Sam wants and it just keeps getting longer. He’s already got the world quite literally at his command, and he wants Dean’s body, and he wants Dean’s soul and it’s terrifying, because how the hell is Dean supposed to keep saying no?

“Don’t look so surprised,” Sam says. “How else am I supposed to keep you safe?”

There are angels out there, hunting for Dean and he’s pretty sure that walking around with his soul held by the prince of Hell would be as good as putting a great big bullseye on his back. He’s the one person who can get beyond close to Sam. He’s the one person that Sam would let hurt him. If Dean’s supposed to be Michael’s vessel then letting Sam claim his soul sounds like it’s opening up holes for the angels to get in and take him whether he invites them in or not. 

Explaining this to Sam would require that Sam stop acting like a bitch for two seconds and listen. Dean’s not counting on that ever happening.

Dean’s a pretty quick thinker when he has to be and these are battle conditions. Their safety is at stake, even if Sam doesn’t know it. He won’t be the weapon used against Sam, or humanity in general. He hooks his fingers into Sam’s belt loops and pulls him in. Not close enough that their hips touch, but almost. “How about you give it a rest for today?” Dean says, tilts his head up – goddamn Sam and his extra inches – and kisses his brother.

Sam grunts like Dean hit him instead and then gets one hand on the side of Dean’s face, the other in the small of his back and really lays one on him. Dean would be impressed with Sam’s technique if he wasn’t busy trying not to freak out about the fact that he’s making out with Sam and that it’s maybe not the worst thing he’s ever had to do.

He pulls away after a few minutes, and they’re both panting slightly, Sam flushed and tousled and looking much more like Dean’s brother than he has in a while. Of all the stupid things. “Just give me a few days,” Dean says, more like a request.

Sam beams at him and the world does that thing where it seems brighter. “Okay,” he says. “Can I drive?”

“Not on your fucking life,” Dean says, and heads back to the car.

*~*~*

They reach a stalemate, but at least Dean knows what the other shoe looks like now. A big old demon-commanding shoe that plays nice like Dean’s a total sucker and that might want to fuck him but really needs saving from itself as well as everything else. Something like that anyway.

Dean knows he hasn’t got long before Sam moves onto whatever step of whatever screwed up plan he’s working on. So he scores himself some points by making up with Ruby – she avoids him, he avoids her, and it’s all fine and dandy – and then goes behind Sam’s back and talks Chuck into letting him into the library. The fact that the library’s windows look out onto Hell don’t make concentrating on research all that easy. He can’t sit with his back to the windows, and he can’t face them, so he has to steel himself long enough to find a book he wants and then leave again, so he can sit in the hallway and read. Dean feels like an enormous pussy, but there’s no one around to judge him, so he just gets on with it.

Three days later, when Dean’s done more reading than he thinks he’d ever done before, he’s finished his research and he’s made his final decisions, Dean’s list for Sam is pretty short.

1) No more demonic possessions and start letting people go.  
2) Seal off Hell so no one else has to go there and no more demons are made.  
3) see the other paper  
4) cut your freaking hair, man, you look like a yeti.  
5) No Hellhounds in the bedroom or anywhere near me  
6) ~~quit pushing me on the whole incest thing~~ We deal with the ~~incest thing~~ incest thing after everything else is settled.

He’s pretty proud of the list and of what he’s got on that other bit of paper.

He finds Sam a week before the big conference, yelling at demons in the boardroom. It’s the same dark style as the rest of the main tower rooms, and the huge table that Sam’s standing at the head of is littered with papers, and files and massive great books. Turns out that there’s a metric ton of rules when it comes to governing Hell and while Sam can get away with doing pretty much what he likes on the earthly plain, even he’s got to trawl through miles and miles of red tape to get anything down downstairs. It means that every time Dean comes across the business of Hell getting done he has the weird sensation of having wandered back into the offices of Sandover, up to his ass in memos and spreadsheets.

Sam finishes laying the smackdown on a handful of demons who’ve pissed him off and sends the rest of them scurrying out, clutching their paperwork and escorting out the now demonless meatsuits. Sam slumps down in his big “I’m the boss” chair and rubs at his head like he’s working on a vision-level migraine.

“Hey,” Dean says, closing the door behind himself. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Sam smiles weakly at him. “They’re just so freaking stupid sometimes. What’s up?”

Dean digs the ratty bit of paper out of his pocket and slaps it down in front of Sam feeling lame. “These are the things I want,” he says. “This is what would make me happy.”

Sam smoothes the paper out and raises his eyebrows. “You don’t think small, do you?”

It’s a little hard for Dean not to feel insulted. “What, you thought it would be shit like, ‘more pie’ and invite the playgirl bunnies over? Thanks, Sam. I fought this war same as you.”

“I wasn’t being cruel,” Sam says, only half paying attention. “I don’t know that I can even do some of these things. Sealing Hell off alone is something that will take months of planning and paperwork and PR…”

Dean smirks. “So it takes months. It’s not like you don’t have the time.”

“I’m not cutting my hair,” Sam says. “What’s the other paper?”

The other paper is something that Dean has painstakingly copied out of one of Sam’s dusty old books. He promised himself he’d save Sam, and he thinks that this stupid, dangerous, hail mary, clusterfuck of an idea might be his only shot. He hands it over. “Don’t nix it right off, dude,” he says. “I’m not giving you my soul, so work with me on this one.”

It’s a ritual that will bind their souls together. Permanently. No takebacks. There’s more fine print than Dean’s had time to wade through, and he knows he’s going to regret that already, but Sam’s not going to wait forever on this. Dean figures that it’s going to go down one of two ways. Either he can use the link to drag Sam out of whatever it was Lucifer did to him, or Sam’ll drag him down into it. Either he saves his brother, or they go down together. Alternatively the procedure will kill him, and he’s not so sure that Sam won’t just leave him down in Hell until he’s a demon, in which case he’ll really lose all their arguments. 

It’s not the best plan ever, Dean’s willing to admit that, but it’s all he’s got.

“Are you out of your fucking mind!” Sam says, when he’s looked at it for a minute or two. “No. No way, Dean.”

If he gives up his soul to Sam, they’re fucked. Sam’s not going to get any less evil, Hell’s reign on Earth is going to carry on, and Dean’s going to wind up possessed by an angel or watching Sam go totally darkside on everyone. Not that Sam’s not ninety percent of the way there already, but still. So that’s not an option.

Dean’s never out-stubborned his brother in his life. He figures that this is it, this is what he’s been saving it up for; this is the one time in his life he’s not going to choose scissors, metaphorically speaking.

“Give me five good reasons why not,” Dean says.

They do the ritual in some room far enough down the main tower that Dean’s sure they’re in the inner circles of Hell. It should be kind of cheesy, all the candles and the big old stone altar, but everything’s covered with a thin layer of ice and it’s freezing cold. The ritual circles are carved into the ice underfoot and the walls around them and the flames of the candles burn a deep red.

Dean hasn’t exactly spent any time with Lucifer or the princes of Hell’s circles, but they’re all gathered around to watch. Dean feels sweaty despite the cold, and utterly terrified, and Sam’s getting naked like it’s no big deal at all. And now Dean is feeling sweaty, utterly terrified, and boggle-eyed. There’re a lot of jokes to be made about Oz’s main tower and overcompensating. Sam isn’t overcompensating. He might need to start undercompensating, if such a thing is possible. Demon blood has to have some kind of freaky growth hormone in it or something, because seriously? 

Dean stops checking out his brother’s junk and reminds himself that he’s a Winchester and he’s not going to get all stage-frighty just because he’s surrounded by fallen angels, about to bind his soul to his brother who wants to fuck him and is the prince of Hell. 

“You sure about this?” Sam says, when he catches Dean dithering, stalling while he takes his jewelry off.

Dean sets his ring down on the pile of his clothes, shifting from bare foot to bare foot. “Are you sure about your face?” he says and flinches when Sam touches his throat, but then the collar is coming off and he takes a deep, calming breath. “You’ve died twice,” Dean says, slapping Sam’s thigh hard enough to leave a handprint as he heads towards the altar. “I’ve been to Hell. A little soul-bonding’ll be like a walk in the park.”

The ice on the altar sticks to his skin when he climbs up on it, and it hurts to pull off and reposition himself so he’s lying next to Sam. Lucifer is looking at him like he’s an animal performing an amusing trick. It doesn’t bode well for Dean’s “save Sam” plan, and it might even qualify as one of those reasons not to do the ritual but it’s too late to change his mind now. Dean wonders if he’s been played. He closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see what’s coming next.

“Sammy,” he says, right before the ritual starts.

“Me too,” Sam says, hooking their pinkies together.

*~*~*

Having your soul bonded to someone else’s is really friggin’ weird. Dean doesn’t get any cool powers; he can’t exorcise demons or bend spoons. He doesn’t feel smarter, or any more inclined to read War and Peace or whatever. He still doesn’t want to eat salads for lunch. He still thinks Hell on Earth is a lousy idea, even if the sight of it doesn’t scare the shit out of him anymore. But he knows where Sam is. He knows if Sam’s hungry, or tired, or happy. Something in his chest gets warm and tingly when Sam’s close to him, which might be the gayest thing Dean’s ever thought in his life, including the time where he kissed his brother and it didn’t totally suck.

It’s stopped feeling like he’s trapped with Sam and started feeling like they’re in it together again. Winchesters against the world.

“What’s giving you the warm and fuzzies?” Sam asks, about a week after the soul-bonding. “You’ve been all Care Bear share on and off all week.” He flops down onto the bed next to Dean and snags the remote control, flipping over to the news.

Dean shrugs and tries to steal it back, but Sam’s got octopus arms and also he’s a cheating cheater who cheats because he uses his powers to pin Dean to the mattress. Which doesn’t freak him out anymore because if he really tries he can break it and also, it just doesn’t feel the same as it used to. It just feels like the warm tingly chest thing all over. 

“It’s nothing,” Dean says, giving up. He rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling. “So what time is this thing?”

“You’ve got about an hour to get into your suit,” Sam says. “Ruby’ll be here in about ten minutes though, so you might wanna put some pants on before then. Also, Bobby’s probably going to be with her so you really might want to have pants on.”

Dean puts the goddamn suit on. Sam’s watching so he can’t pretend he’s James Bond, which totally defeats the point of wearing a suit, but at least they’re both dressed by the time there’s a knock on the door. Ruby stays out of his way, but Bobby and Cas are both there too, and Dean spends a few minutes giving Bobby a slightly less than manly hug and slapping Cas on the shoulder and congratulating him on not getting fried by an archangel before the war even started.

Being soul-bonded to Sam, apart from being stupid sounding, means that Dean is browbeaten into attending the conference, where he has to shake hands and kiss babies and shit like that. It also means that when Sam gets in front of everyone he uses his grip on Dean’s shoulder to maneuver him forwards and announces that they’re soul-bonded – and the more Dean says that, the gayer it sounds – so any angels with bright ideas should probably just give it up.

Sam’s not wrong. There’s no way they’re using Dean as a vessel now. He’s attached to Sam in weird metaphysical ways and he’s pretty sure he’s useless to Michael. It doesn’t make soul-bonding sound any less gay and Sam could maybe not have his arm around Dean’s shoulders when he talks about it. 

Sam also announces that Dean is going to be in charge of Supernatural relations with Hell. Any problems with the out of the closet vampires, or abuses in the werewolf full-moon detention centers, Dean’s on it. Which is news to Dean. He’d argue, because as awesome as that sounds, he’s supposed to be getting Sam out of the bureaucracy, not helping out with it, but they’re kind of in front of hundreds of people and are being broadcast live to thousands more, and also Sam is announcing that he’s shutting Hell.

No more new demons, no more back and forthing, with the ones already out, and sure, Sam’s not laying out a plan to get rid of all the ones riding people, or dealing with the backlog still writhing in the Pit, but it’s a start. It’s a really awesome start.

Not only that, but it’s a really awesome start that Dean was sure Lucifer would put the kibosh on. But it and the other angels can still move between the worlds, and Dean’s sort of got the impression that Lucifer is bored with demons and bored with turning human souls into them, especially now that God doesn’t seem to be watching. Maybe Dean shouldn’t feel too sympathetic, but he’s pretty sure that if he’d been caged in Hell as long as Lucifer, he wouldn’t give a flying fuck what Sam did with it either.

And Dean might be tired after the conference from playing nice with all the freaks who like to hang around Hell, and wrung out from recalling old war stories with Bobby and not stabbing Ruby all over again, and putting up with Sam’s big grabby hands towing him around from pillar to post, two days of the suit, but for the first time in years and years and years, things are looking like they might even turn out okay.

So yeah. One for the good guys.

*~*~*

The last thing on Dean’s list has gone unchecked, which is weird. Not that incest is ever normal, but rather it’s strange that Sam hasn’t forced the point. It’s not like Sam has been the king of subtle about what he wants from Dean but he hasn’t brought it up. It makes Dean shudder to think how long this has been going on, what it was that brought this out in Sam. Was it his transformation into the Boy King? Was it when Dean sold his soul and the demons taunted that Sam hadn’t been brought back right. Was it before that? Before Stanford? Dean doesn’t want to know that he did this to Sam, that he somehow managed to fuck his brother up that way, because he’s got front row seats to the things Sam wants to do to him and he really hopes that it’s not his fault. 

Sam wakes up in the night – if he even sleeps at all – pressed against Dean’s back, hard against his ass, one hand dangerously low on Dean’s stomach. And Sam gets up, goes into the bathroom and comes back flaccid. The fact that Dean is grateful for that should be a big hint that he’s not sleeping much himself. It’s not like Sam to hold back, to not force a point. But he’s been mostly keeping his hands to himself, a little flirting, a little pushy, but not actually pushing, not saying anything, and not groping Dean while Dean pretends to be asleep.

Dean’s head is all full up with Sam’s dreams, twisted motel sheets and the hard surface of the library tables, the cold press of Sam’s throne, warm sunshine on them, and hellfire, and the bone bleach of the moon. Dean’s mouth is bruised from sucking Sam, from gags, from kissing, Sam’s half out of a suit, stripping off jeans and flannel, naked. It doesn’t matter. Sometimes Dean is willing in the dreams, sometimes shy, sometimes slutty and desperate, and sometimes he’s not willing at all so Sam just holds him down and takes, his big hands and broad shoulders, his powers, the whammy. The details aren’t important. Sam dreams about sweat and spit and fucking into Dean like he’s trying to break them both wide open, Dean under him, bent over tables and beds, sitting on his dick, hands on Sam’s chest as he rides him, twisted up on his side; Sam always leaves bruises and Dean always moans like he’s being paid for it, coming warm and wet for Sam whether he wants to or whether he doesn’t. Sam’s the one who’s dreaming, but he’s not the only one waking up hard.

He probably should have read the fine print on the whole binding their souls together thing a little more carefully. Or at all. Honestly, the dreams are so vivid that Dean’s been starting to wonder if it’s not more than just him getting a peek into Sam’s subconscious, if it’s not more like the two of them, off in Nod, and Dean’s letting it happen, letting Sam fuck him boneless and stupid. He’d be a little more aggravated at their combined subconscious about the distinct lack of topping he gets to do, except for the part where Sam’s a goddamn artist with his dick and, more importantly, the part where he doesn’t want anyone fucking anyone.

It’s kind of driving Dean crazy. He hasn’t been laid in what feels like years (it’s over a year and a half certainly) and he’s pretty sure if he spends any more time jerking off he’s going to go blind. Not that letting Sam fuck him up the ass is a great solution to his problem.

Dean really wishes there was someone he could talk to. “Hi, Bobby, so Sam really wants to fuck me, what do you think I should do about that?” Not so much. He doesn’t call Bobby and he doesn’t call Ellen either, even though she might be a little more receptive to what he had to say. Probably because she’d gone deaf during the war and wouldn’t be able to hear him, but whatever.

Chuck sort of kneecapped him, cornering him in one of the corridors that didn’t go anywhere. “I have to see it,” he said. “If you even think about making me talk about it, I’ll set Suriel on you.”

“Future sex or dream sex?” Dean asked.

“You’re just lucky one of you knows how to fuck,” Chuck said, grimacing and pulling a hotel sized bottle of vodka from his jacket pocket. Suriel plucked it out of his hand and drank it herself. “I thought I was going to fall asleep writing about you and Anna.” He was obviously in a shitty mood, he was saying that just to be mean, probably. So that was Chuck and the only thing Suriel would say was “Honey, if you don’t want him, send him my way,” which wasn’t all that helpful either.

Dean puzzles over how Chuck’s brain works, and exactly how freaked out he is that some random dude has been watching him screw girls up and down America, and then seeks out better advice.

He doesn’t get it.

“There’s got to be a nice way of saying, Sam, you’re hot and all, and I’m sure it would be awesome, but dude, you’re my brother and that’s just not something I’m into,” Dean said a few days after the Chuck incident. “You spend a lot of time with him; you’ve got to have some kind of suggestion.”

The sound of Lucifer’s laughter, awkwardly enough, made Dean kind of hard. “Oh,” the angel said, wiping away tears of mirth. “You are too perfect. You want our advice? Fuck his brains out, we think it would be good for him.”

“That’s not really what I was looking for,” Dean said, scrubbing a hand over his head. 

Lucifer patted him on the shoulder. “No one is ever going to love you like Sam does,” it said. “Let’s be honest, Dean Winchester, you’re damaged in such very specific ways that you’re useless to anyone else but our prince. So why not let him have you?”

Dean didn’t say anything to that, because as protected as he was, he was pretty sure that telling Lucifer to fuck itself would be pushing a little too far. He figured it served him right, asking the Prince of Lies for advice, but still.

Asking Castiel wasn’t super-helpful either.

“I don’t get it,” Dean says to Castiel. “What’s up with everyone thinking I’m some kind of emotional cripple?”

Castiel’s gaze shifts to an extremely ugly wall sconce. “Your upbringing was difficult for you, I know,” he says. “Your father was very hard on your and his favoritism towards Sam was-”

“Oh Jesus,” Dean groans, “not you too.”

“Sam does love you,” Castiel says but Dean is already storming off.

He’s kind of got everything he wants, is the thing. Sam’s walled off Hell from humanity, they’re not taking in any new souls. And maybe Sam still looks like his hair is possessed, but he’s looked that way since puberty, so whatever. And it’s been good, this sharing their souls thing. They’ve been good. Dean’s not sure they’ve ever been this settled together. Dean loves his brother, he’s just not sure he loves Sam like that. Not while he’s awake enough to tell himself no, anyway. He writes himself another list and wonders if this is something that has transferred over from Sam.

1) Sam  
2) Sam wants stuff  
3) I maybe want that stuff too   
4) sometimes.  
5) Lucifer thinks it’s a good idea which means it’s probably a bad idea. (Lucifer did help save the world)  
6) What happens when you’re dreaming stays in Vegas (chuck needs to dry out)  
7) Man the fuck up

This list, he will be the first to admit, is kind of crappy.

Dean tosses it into one of the myriad of fireplaces around Oz and then goes for a drive.

*~*~*

Sam’s in the library when Dean goes looking for him. He’d disappeared down there two days ago muttering about getting souls out of Hell and improperly filed relief claims, whatever the fuck that means. He’s been keeping himself walled off from the bond between them, something Dean actually hasn’t figured out how to do yet, and while Dean is glad he doesn’t have to deal with second-hand boredom, it’s frustrating. 

His boots clomp across the stone floor and Sam looks up, though since Dean can feel Sam through the bond, he’s pretty sure Sam knew he was there long before he even opened the door. Dean takes a quick survey of the huge tower of books next to his brother and the tired circles under Sam’s eyes and hops up onto the table, shoving dusty old tomes out of his way. He figures beer pong and Jessica are the only two reasons Sam didn’t drive himself nuts at Stanford.

This conversation is probably going to suck out loud. Dean’s ready for it, but he doesn’t have to like it. “Do me a favour and don’t freak out,” Dean says and Sam gets up, his chair scraping loudly on the flagstones. “More than you’re already doing. Jesus, does reading these things give you ADD or what? Calm down.” He coughs and looks away. Sam doesn’t sit back down. “Okay, so you’re an enormous girl and I don’t want you to be embarrassed, is all.”

Sam folds his arms across his chest, shirt pulling at the shoulders. Dean makes a mental note to talk to Ruby about that. He hasn’t been able to make Sam wear anything not douchey or ill-fitting since Sam was twelve and someone has to have a word with the prince of Hell and remind him that just because he’s the size of a goddamn mountain doesn’t mean he can’t find a t-shirt that actually freaking fits him. Since Dean still doesn’t much care for Ruby, he thinks giving her a thankless job sounds about right.

He’s thought of a few things he could say in this moment and right now none of them seem right. “Berith told me you don’t actually need to sleep as much as you do, so, well…whatever, and it’s none of my business…” 

So maybe this wasn’t part of Dean’s plan when he signed up for the soul-bonding, and if he’s honest with himself, he’s not a hundred percent sure that this isn’t Sam pulling him down, instead of him pulling Sam up. But this is where they are, and Dean’s willing to put everything he’s got into making their soul, and Sam’s reign on earth, as good as it can be considering it’s fundamentally evil. Sam’s reign, not their soul.

Dean spares a moment to wonder if being evil is like insanity, if you think you’re evil you’re probably not, but if you are, you’ll think you’re totally fine. He has no idea where this puts him and Sam.

He’s fucking this little speech up so he decides to keep sticking his foot in his mouth and just get it over with. “You’ve been having these dreams.”

“You’ve seen them,” Sam says flatly. Not like he’s angry, more like he’s really trying not to make this more awkward than it already is because the silence is getting weird and Dean can’t think of anything he wants to say, so they’re just sort of staring at each other like morons.

“Fuck,” Sam says and sits back down in his chair.

Either Sam’s the best actor in the world, or he had actually resigned himself to the fact that a little dream action was all he was going to get from Dean. Considering what Berith said, that Sam needs to sleep maybe once a month, it seems pretty likely that he’s been betting on the latter. “You weren’t supposed to know,” Sam says, staring out the windows at Hell.

Dean sort of thought that Sam was working him over, trying to talk him into it without talking him into it. It’s actually nice to know that Sam’s not that much of a sneaky bitch. “I figured,” Dean lies. “So I’ve been thinking about that mountain, or molehill, or whatever it was…And maybe you were right. Maybe it’s not so bad.”

“Not so bad?” Sam says. “I dragged you to Hell, I want to fuck you, and that’s _not so bad_?”

Okay, so maybe Dean isn’t doing this right. If you put it like that it sounds kind of like he’s humouring Sam. Incest is something you probably need more than a lukewarm reception for. Dean slides off the table so he’s standing between Sam’s knees. The chair is pretty high, but Sam’s now eyelevel with Dean’s crotch so he gets up on the chair too, knees either side of Sam’s hips. So now he’s sitting on Sam’s lap, but at least it’s not totally weird.

“What?” Sam says and Dean is really sick of all the talking. He’s fucking this up and why did Sam have to pick this to get all obtuse about? Dean kisses his brother and wonders if Sam’s sudden reluctance to just take what he wants is something he got from Dean’s side of their soul, or if he’s worn himself out in the dreams.

But Sam gets with this new program pretty fast, pulling Dean in closer, so Dean’s knees bang against the back of the chair and then getting Dean’s face in his hands, angling his head exactly how he wants it. Because Dean’s brother is grabby and bossy and that’s kind of okay right now because holy shit he’s just as good at kissing in real life as he is in their dreams, wet and nasty, sucking on Dean’s tongue so all Dean can think about is what that might feel like if it was his dick.

He pushes Sam back and Sam grabs onto his thighs like he’s planning on keeping Dean exactly where he is no matter what. “It’s still incest,” Sam says. “And you don’t want this.” His grip on Dean is telling a different story about how this is going to go, but Dean pries one of them off and puts it against his chest.

“Don’t tell me what I want,” he says. “Quit being a bitch and see for yourself.”

He can feel it when Sam stops walling himself off and there’s a lot of really fucked up stuff going on with Sam. He’s seen the darker dreams and is intimately familiar with Sam’s jealous, possessive side, and the “no doesn’t always mean no” dreams. But Dean’s saying yes and he’s practically humming with their connection, hard and still a little bit weirded out, but mostly just ready to finally let them be everything for each other. 

“You gonna fuck me or what?” Dean asks and Sam gets his hands under Dean’s thighs, lifts, stands, and shoves Dean back onto the table, books spilling off onto the ground. 

Dean tugging at Sam’s shirt until Sam stops chewing on his neck long enough to help him out and pull it off. Dean tips his head back so Sam will stop pulling his hair and runs a hand over the scarring on Sam’s chest and arm.

“Does it hurt?” he asks and Sam shakes his head, popping the buttons on Dean’s jeans and yanking them down, along with his boxers.

“Not a lot of feeling there,” Sam says, pressing Dean’s hips down so he can be a total tease and lick and suck at his thighs and hips, totally ignoring Dean’s dick. Dean pulls his own shirt off, head thumping back against the stone table when Sam starts marking up his inner thighs, and his messy hair is brushing over Dean’s balls and dick.

Dean grabs a handful of Sam’s hair and hauls him up so Sam is pressed against him, grinding their hips together. Sam’s still in his jeans and Dean shudders as the denim drags hard over his cock and Sam takes that opportunity to bite one of his nipples. “Jesus, Sam,” he says, groaning, and Sam sucks on his bottom lip until Dean’s mouth feels swollen. 

“Tell me you’ve got something,” Sam says and he’s lucky Dean’s just that freaking awesome.

“Jeans,” Dean says. “Back pocket.”

It’s kind of an effort for Dean to get out of Hell without help and he’d been reluctant to ask any of the fallen angels if they could maybe get him some lube, so all they’ve got is a single-serving, emergency sachet Dean found at the bottom of his duffle. If it was a condom he’s pretty sure it would be expired. He’s also pretty sure it’s not going to be enough, but he’s naked on a library table in _Hell_ about to let his little brother fuck him up the ass. Either they do this now, or Dean’s going to spontaneously combust from embarrassment. 

Sam leans over and kisses him again and Dean hooks one leg up over Sam’s waist to make things a little easier. So Sam takes total advantage and pushes two fingers up into Dean, popping open his own fly with one hand so his dick is dragging wetly over the skin of Dean’s thigh.

“Holy shit,” Dean says, arching up, half trying to get away from it because that hurts like a son of a bitch and half trying to get away because Sam managed to jam both those fingers right up against his prostate and Dean’s never going to hear the end of it if he comes now. Sam’s got this possessive, dominating thing going on, apparently Dean’s kind of into that. Who knew, right?

“This okay?” Sam asks, a little late, since he’s pretty much fucking Dean with his fingers, opening him up.

Dean hitches his leg up a little higher on Sam’s sweaty back and nods. His thighs are shaking, and he can’t get enough air. Sam hooks his arm under Dean’s thigh to hold him open and pushes in another finger. He gets his other hand around Dean’s throat, not tight, just holding. “I never thought you’d be like this in real life,” Sam says. “Thought there was no way you’d let me do this. Let me fuck you like this, open up for me like you’re fucking made for it. Let me fuck you up like this.” Dean digs his bitten-down nails in where the scar tissue ends on Sam’s shoulder and Sam gives a full-body twitch.

“Quit trash-talking and do it already,” Dean says. Sam pulls his fingers out and smears what little is left of the lube on himself before he does what Dean said. Dean jerks and shudders, heel banging against Sam’s back. “Oh my god,” Dean says as Sam pushes into him, not giving him time to fucking breathe, until he can feel the open fly of Sam’s jeans against his ass and Sam’s panting against his throat, hot and damp.

It’s too much and Dean squirms, trying to figure out if he likes it or not, because he doesn’t remember this from the dreams, it was easier there, but Sam takes that as an invitation and starts thrusting like he’s trying to pop Dean’s hip out of joint. 

One thing was true about their nocturnal shenanigans and that’s that Sam is good at this. Really, freaking awesome in fact and Dean’s suddenly on board with this like he wasn’t totally sure he was going to be. He likes sex plenty, more than plenty, and so maybe he usually kind of gets a kick out of aggressive girls. Sam’s aggressive, that’s for sure. 

Sam rakes his teeth over Dean’s shoulder and his fingernails over one of Dean’s nipples, and Dean feels cracked open and crazy, clutching at Sam’s hair and back. “Sammy,” he says, voice wrecked, and then can’t say anything else because Sam is tongue-fucking his mouth like he intends to get inside Dean any way he can. There’s nothing for Dean to brace himself on so his back is scraping against the stone because Sam’s balancing with one hand next to Dean’s stomach and the other is holding Dean’s face, thumb tucked under his bottom lip.

And then he stops.

“Fuck,” Dean says, hips jerking uselessly against Sam’s weight. Sam’s about as deep in him as he’s going to get and Dean’s not going anywhere. “Sam,” he says, and it might sound a little bit like begging, but if he’s not mistaken, that’s not going to be a problem for Sam. “C’mon, shit, I’m so close.” And he is, even though Sam’s not even come close to touching his dick. “What the fuck are you stopping for?”

Sam’s eyes are wide and he pets weirdly at Dean’s hair and chest. “Just need a minute,” Sam says. 

Dean groans and thumps his head against the table. “Sammy,” he says and Sam pushes that little bit deeper into him.

“I’m _inside_ you,” Sam says.

“Oh my god are you kidding me?” Dean mutters. “You’re a freaking girl genius. We finishing this or did you want me to paint your nails for you?”

Sam grabs his hair again, jerking Dean’s head so Dean has to look at him. “I love you so fucking much,” Sam says, voice a growl. It’s a big gay declaration, and a promise, and a threat all in one.

Dean opens his mouth to call Sam a girl again and makes a punched moan instead when Sam starts fucking him, without any more preamble. He finally gets one of those big hands around Dean’s cock and starts jerking him off and Dean can’t find anything more to say other than Sam’s name, gasped out every time Sam pushes into him and he comes, panting against Sam’s shoulder. Sam grips his hips, hard enough to add to the bruises already there and shoves into him, pulling him down the table onto his dick, and comes.

Dean lies there, catching his breath, feeling Sam’s come leak out of him, his brother’s dick softening in his ass. Sam’s heavy on top of him, pretty much out for the count. Dean rubs a hand over Sam’s hair and decides he’s a genius himself for doing this.

Sam grunts and pushes himself up slightly, carefully pulling out before flopping back onto the table next to Dean. They probably look like idiots; Sam’s still in his jeans and Dean’s still got one of his shoes on, which he toes off.

“Was it good for you, baby?” Dean asks, only half serious.

Sam gives him the most half-assed middle finger Dean’s ever seen, eyes shut. “Fuck you,” he says. “Again.” He pushes a few more books away from himself to make room for himself and they join the others on the floor.

Dean rolls over so he’s got his head on Sam’s shoulder, figuring he just took it up the ass, so a little...not cuddling…this is nothing.

“Are we good?” Dean asks, because he was half serious before.

Sam’s fingers, and that better not be the hand all covered in lube, the dickhead, card through Dean’s hair. “Yeah,” he says and then, after a long, contented pause, “I know you’re still waiting on the whole demon army thing and I know it’s been bugging you that I haven’t disbanded them.”

“Now?” Dean asks, screwing his eyes shut because he really, really doesn’t want to talk politics.

“Cas told me about the whole Michael’s vessel thing you weren’t telling me.” Sam only sounds mildly accusing. “I just…The gates of heaven are still shut to new souls, so with Hell closed there’s one bigass purgatory going on.”

Dean opens his eyes again with a sigh. “What’s your totally non-post-coital point?”

“I kind of thought that now we’re, you know, working together, we could come up with some sort of diplomatic thing and convince them to reopen.”

“You want to go kick their asses?” Dean says.

Sam shrugs awkwardly under him. “Saving people, hunting things,” he says. “Whatever.”

Dean puts his hand on Sam’s chest, and he can feel Sam’s heart beating there and the content thrum of their bond. “You’re one of those assholes who wants to jump up and save the world after sex, aren’t you?”

He can practically hear Sam’s smirk. “I’ve got a quick recovery time,” Sam says. “Or I could fuck you again…”

Dean pinches Sam. “Oh fine,” he says. “Let’s go save the world again.”

End.


End file.
